Death and Deception (17 page)

‘What if he’s working late?’

‘Ring him and see. Does he have anyone booked in for tonight?’

‘No, but you never know.’ She swirled her beer in its bottle. ‘I don’t want to do this, Dan.’ She looked at him properly for the first time that evening, shaking her head with each word to emphasise her worry. ‘I’m scared of what might happen.’

Dan tried for a smile. He was quite worried about what might happen, too.

‘Please? Give Jed a ring now and we can see if it’s possible. Perhaps you could suggest meeting up for a drink? That way, I’ll know you’re both out of the way. If he’s working late, I promise I’ll wait until I get the warrant and then you won’t need to do anything. We can just go back to getting to know each other. OK?’

He knew he was pushing her hard. He also knew that he had no intention of ever seeing her again. He was surprised at how easy it was to fool her.

He watched as the girl weighed up the pros and cons of betraying her boss to her new boyfriend. She was struggling with it. He drank his beer and gave her time, holding lightly onto her hand
.

‘OK, I’ll do it,’ she said eventually, having reached some sort of conclusion in her head. ‘I’m going to the Ladies, then I’ll ring Jed. If the studio’s going to be empty, I’ll give you the keys, but I want them back before midnight, so I’ve got them before I go to bed. And you promise me, he will never know I let you in?’

Dan promised. Another lie.
How easily they came.
She gave him her address.

‘You must promise me you won’t tell Jed,’ he said. ‘We probably aren’t going to find anything anyway, so no point in annoying him.’

She smiled at him, and nodded, ‘Got it.’

He watched her head off to the toilet and rang Ian. They arranged to meet at the entrance to the alley at 9.00 p.m. assuming Chas gave them the all clear. Dan needed time to get home, change out of his suit and into something more appropriate for breaking and entering. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked this new person he was turning into.

Chas made her call when she returned. Jed told her he was going out to see a band later that evening and was at home. Did Chas want to go with him? Dan nodded at her - she couldn’t be implicated in the B & E if she was in a club with the owner of the studio.

Chas said she would head over to his place and ended the call. She passed over the keys, and wrote the alarm code on his hand. She kissed him on the cheek and rose to leave.

‘Don’t forget to give me back the keys.’ She winked at him. ‘I could always pop over for them later, save you coming over to me,’ was her parting shot.

Date: Tuesday 25
^th
April Time: 20:54 DI Hellier and DCI Gould

Marilyn Gould looked across at her husband. She couldn’t figure out what was going on. He was sitting at the dining table dressed entirely in black, like the Milk Tray man, but with a paunch and a bald patch. On the table were a big Maglite torch that had been police issue years ago, his phone, a pair of latex gloves, and what looked suspiciously like a balaclava. He was trying to squash all of it into the pockets of his fishing jacket.

‘Are you going to tell me what you’re up to, Ian?’ she asked, inwardly cursing as she realised she’d dropped a stitch and now had to undo the whole row.

‘Up to, my love?’

‘With the James Bond routine. Have you got a beautiful blonde and a fancy car outside?’

Gould laughed. ‘I wish. No, I’m just going out with Dan Hellier the new DI, for a drink. Thought it was about time I introduced him to the delights of Exeter’s nightlife.’

She regarded him sceptically. He used to be much slicker at lying. But things had been so much better between them over the last few years, and if he wanted to go out on a little adventure without telling her what he was up to, she wasn’t going to stop him. If it was Police business, he wouldn’t tell her anyway.

Marilyn focussed on her knitting again. It was a complicated cable pattern but it would look fantastic as a baby blanket for Laura’s first one. It could go with the bonnet and socks she’d already got in the drawer. She could hardly wait to be a grandma. She was going to be looking after the baby three days a week so Laura could go back to work. That would get her out of the house for a bit while Ian found his retirement feet, so to speak. She found her mind wandering back to how Ian was going to occupy himself when he retired. He liked fishing, so that would get him out of the house. Maybe they could travel, go to New Zealand to see her sister or India or somewhere?

Gould’s phone rang. He stood up, listened, said a few words back, kissed his wife and headed out the door.

‘Don’t wait up,’ he called as he pulled the door behind him.

Gould couldn’t help whistling the theme tune from the James Bond movies as he waited in the music shop doorway for Dan to arrive. The night was cool and wet, puddles reflecting the streetlights on the main street, but inky in the blackness of the alleyway. He also couldn’t help leaping out at Dan from the shadows and making him jump.

‘Jesus, Ian, you’re not five,’ muttered Dan, waiting for his heart to subside.

Gould snorted a quiet laugh. ‘D’you know, I genuinely didn’t understand that being Chief Inspector would mean that I would spend far more of my time behind a desk supervising investigations than carrying them out. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been so unhappy in the job recently. Planning and writing reports just doesn’t interest me.’

He dragged the balaclava out of one pocket and placed it on his head, just above his ears. Dan couldn’t respond to the chatter, which he put down to nervousness, although it could have been excitement. Gould didn’t seem to notice how quiet he was.

‘I feel positively frisky,’ he said. ‘Marilyn had better not be asleep when I get home.’ He glanced at Dan. ‘Have you brought gloves?’ Dan showed his gloved hands. Gould had brought some, of course, and pulled them on with relish.

‘Ok, Boy wonder, lead on,’ and they slipped into the gloom of the alleyway, pulling hoods over their heads.

Dan had a feeling that it would be pretty easy to identify the bulk and gait of his partner on CCTV even without facial recognition, but it was the best they could do at short notice. He kept his head down and clung to the darkest wall as they groped their way to the entrance. Gould held his torch over the lock of the heavy, scarred outer door. Dan fumbled with the key and grimaced at the muffled tut from behind him.

‘It won’t go in,’ he said, ‘I…’ It wouldn’t go in because the lock was already undone. Dan backed away from the doorway as if he’d been burnt. ‘It’s open,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Gould was not so easily put off. He checked the inner door and it was firmly locked. ‘I reckon Abrams forgot to lock the outside door, the rest is locked up fine.’ He squinted through the glass door. ‘I can see a faint red glow down there, probably a security light. There aren’t any other lights on and it’s as quiet as the grave. Come on.’ He gestured impatiently at Dan to give him the keys.

Swallowing his reluctance, Dan passed them over and crept in behind the older man. The alarm began to beep a warning signal. He was reassured that the building was locked after all. Breathing more steadily,
he fed in the code and waited for the beeping to stop.
Gould unlocked the glass door and wedged it open a fraction with the doormat.

‘Always keep your exit free, basic training manual, page 1.’

‘Basic breaking and entering manual, page 1, too,’ muttered Dan behind him.

He followed Gould down the carpeted stairs. Neither man wanted to put the lights on until they were inside the studio, so they traced pictures on the wall with the wavering beams of their torches as they descended. Gould unlocked the final glass door at the bottom of the stairs and handed the keys back to Dan.

‘For your girlfriend,’ he whispered, and chuckled as he stepped round the corner into the spacious Reception area, torch held out in front of him.

The room was lit only by the interrogative glow of a red light on the alarm box high in the corner of the ceiling. Gould located the main lights and padded across the room to the bank of switches on the control room wall.

Dan took more care as he peered around the doorway, staring into the red space, his uneasiness magnified by the dream-like light. And saw what he most dreaded. A blackness, shadow within shadow, figure from a child’s nightmare, rose up from the floor behind the desk.

‘Ian! Get down!‘ he screamed, but could only watch as in a horrible slow motion the creature raised its arm and he saw the unmistakeable outline of a gun against the crimson flicker on the wall.

Gould was slow, far too slow. But he dropped obediently to his knees, and felt the bullet as a point of heat where it entered his chest, and as a seeping cold as he tumbled to meet the floor.

A scream came from inside the control room, an incoherent yell of anger. Chas Lloyd came hurtling round the corner and leapt onto the back of the shooter, scratching at his head. She clamped her teeth onto the huge gunman’s ear and attempted to pull the arm holding the gun back over his head. The man growled in pain and used his free arm to grab the back of the girl’s coat and throw her over his head like a child’s toy. She smacked into the metal corner of the reception desk and fell quiet.

Dan reacted on an instinct fleeter than thought. He yanked his baton from his pocket, whipped it open, ran up and over the leather sofa and smashed it down on the gunman’s forearm. The big man dropped the gun, screaming in pain and shock. Throwing himself to the floor, Dan used the stick across the back of the gunman’s knees, bringing him down too. The man scrabbled crab-like for his gun, howling as he tried to wriggle across the floor on deadened legs.

Dan rolled and twisted himself up onto his hands and knees next to the gunman. He straddled him, pinning the gunman’s good arm under his knee, and rammed the baton as hard as he could into the man’s temple. He watched the man’s eyes roll up into his head. He lay still.

He screamed into the man’s slack face, ‘I hope I’ve killed you. I hope I’ve killed you, murdering bastard.’

He fell away panting, dropped the baton, and half crawling, half creeping scrambled over to the dark lump that was his colleague. Gould was still breathing, but it was ragged, stilted breathing. The bullet seemed to have pierced a lung.

‘Can’t breathe…’ he gasped, struggling to sit up.

‘Stay quiet, mate,’ Dan said, scrubbing tears from his face. ‘We’ll get you to hospital. It’ll be alright.’

Gould’s eyelids fluttered and he sank into unconsciousness.

Dan looked up as he heard a noise from the kitchen and leaned back ready to grab the gun. Jed Abrams came out, quivering and shaking with his hands in the air.

‘I never meant...’ he began, and then stopped as he saw the limp body of Chas Lloyd by the desk. Whimpering, he crossed the room and knelt beside her, trying to straighten out her twisted limbs.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he repeated.

Dan turned his phone on. There were so many messages wanting his attention. He rang for an ambulance. ‘Officer down,’ would bring them quickly. No need for an Armed Response unit. Too late now. He shrugged off his jacket and bundled it up under Gould’s head. On the floor next to the desk, Abrams had gathered the broken body of Chas Lloyd close to him. Dan couldn’t tell if she was alive or not, but he couldn’t spare the emotion to check.

He knew he had to make sure there was no one else there. Shock was protecting him now, but it would wear off. He placed Gould’s head back onto the rolled up jacket, and wiped a small trickle of blood and fluid from his chin. Rising to a crouch, he checked the other smaller rooms and found they were empty.

Lastly, he went to the Post-production video room and was not surprised to find that it was also completely empty. No DVDs, no CDs, no recording machines, nothing but empty shelves, a table and a chair. Abrams had emptied it already, or there had never been anything there in the first place.

Dan sank back down next to Gould and held his hand while they waited. He could hear the rasp of his breath and the rattle of fluid in his lungs as he struggled for air.

It slowly seeped through his dulled senses. Chas had set them up. He had been a total, gullible idiot. She had probably rung Abrams when she went to the Ladies. Why had he not seen that coming? Jesus, had he been that easy to deceive?

But then, in the middle of the shooting, she had tried to save his life, and had quite possibly given her own whilst she did it. Hard to make any sense of that. She must have thought the shooter had shot him rather than Ian. He stared around him at the bodies on the floor. Two of the foreigners were not here, just the big guy. Where were they? Was this a warning to keep out? Had the gunman thought that Ian was armed? His torch could have looked like a gun, he supposed. So many questions banged against his brain. He couldn’t begin to process them.

But the truth was inescapable: there was nothing here that could help them with their investigation. It had been a total red herring.

From his position in the entrance of Blockbusters, across the road from the studio, Grigor Pelakais watched, rigid with shock, as police cars and ambulances arrived. What had gone wrong? It should have been a simple warning to the Police to keep out of their business. They were behaving illegally by breaking in. Abrams just had to pretend he was working late, and then make an official complaint when he found the officers on his premises. It should have been simple.

He felt impotent as he watched his friend being carried into an ambulance. There seemed to be a drip being supported by a medic next to Filip’s arm, so maybe he wasn’t dead. And by the size of the body on the second stretcher, the little girl Chas, had also been hurt. Jed Abrams had been shoved into a police car and driven off.

He should have gone in with Filip, no matter what Irina had said. And now… What if Filip died? How could he carry on living without him? It would suit Irina if he died. She would have Grigor to herself. Filip would be too frightened to tell the Police anything even if he lived. As usual, she would be safe from the chaos she caused.