Good Bait (DCI Karen Shields #1)(77)

The colour had blanched from Dyer’s cheeks and there was a pronounced twitch in one of his grey-green eyes.

‘You want to take a look, Stuart? Take a look at these?’

With exaggerated care, Ramsden fanned out half a dozen photographs taken inside the storage unit, three bodies, like so much casual slaughter, hanging down.

‘Pretty, don’t you think?’

Dyer bit into his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

‘Of course,’ Ramsden said, a change of voice, change of tone, ‘I can understand why you’d have wanted to be involved. Jamie Parsons, him as was gunned down in Camden, he was your cousin, yeah?’

Dyer nodded.

‘Any kind of payback, only right you’d want to be involved. Family, yeah? Your mum’d have told you, I’m sure. Got to stand up, Stu. Be counted on this. But I bet she never, you never, thought it would come to this …’ Tapping the photographs. ‘Am I right, Stuart? Am I right? You never …’

There was panic now, bright and darting, in his eyes. The kind you see in rats, Ramsden thought, trapped up against the wire.

Slowly, he leaned in, not enough to frighten, just enough to reassure. ‘What we need to talk about, Stuart, is how you got yourself mixed up in all this. See if there isn’t something we can do. Some way round this, don’t leave you in the dock along with everyone else. Culpable homicide, Stuart, three times over. Life inside. You don’t want that.’ Reaching across, Ramsden patted his hand. ‘Okay, Stuart? Okay? Let’s see what we can do.’

‘This is all on tape?’ Karen said. ‘Transcribed?’

Ramsden grinned his crooked grin. ‘Even as we speak.’

They were in her office, evening, late, but no one was going home. Sandwiches, half-eaten; coffees, growing cold. Through the blur of half-glass, other officers moved around as if underwater, sat hunched over their desks, computers, accessed this list and that, pressed keys, made calls.

‘He’s named everyone?’

‘Everyone in the car, the van. Everyone involved.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Les Arthurs, Kevin Martin, Jason Richards riding with Dyer in the Volvo, Dougie Freeman and Mike Carter up ahead in the van.’

‘Just Kevin Martin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not Terry?’

Ramsden shook his head.

‘Shame,’ Karen said.

‘Yes. No Dooley, either. Too careful to get his hands dirty, this kind of business. Just a name, where Dyer’s concerned. Barely that.’

‘Who was it, then, set him up?’

‘Arthurs, apparently. Told him there was going to be some serious payback for what had happened to his cousin, Jamie. Give them a good working over, that’s what Dyer reckoned. What went on out at Wing, he didn’t know about. Not till after.’

‘Even though he was there?’

‘Sent him off for pizza, didn’t they? His story. Twenty-mile round trip in search of fifteen-inch pepperoni pizzas. Maybe when this is over he’ll get a job with Domino’s.’

‘You believe all that? Believe him or d’you think he’s just stringing us along?’

Ramsden shrugged. ‘I’d say, bit of both. But right now, it suits us to take what he’s saying as gospel. Long as it keeps him talking. And, besides, what he’s given us so far, Carter and Arthurs doing most of the heavy stuff, fits in pretty well with what we might have guessed. Nasty bastards, both of them. Sooner they’re off the streets the better.’

Karen nodded. ‘I’ve had one conversation with Burcher already. Due another one tomorrow.’

‘No plans for lifting Arthurs and the others till then?’

Karen shook her head. ‘Watching brief only. Till we’re told otherwise. My guess, they’ll want to wait till they’re sure everything’s in place, make one fell swoop.’

‘Just so long as they don’t hold off too long, let ‘em slip away. And make sure they remember who got ‘em this far. Don’t let the bastards grab all the glory.’

A rueful smile came to Karen’s face. ‘Trust me on that one, Mike. Trust me.’





48


This time the meeting was in a hotel close to the Westway, a conference room on the eleventh floor. Corporate anonymity. Silent through triple-glazed windows, three lanes of slow-moving traffic eased their way, ghost like, towards the city centre; drivers, whey faced, bored, listening absently to the radio, smoking, illegally using their mobile phones. On the table, jugs of water, glasses, a selection of sweet biscuits, notepads and pens bearing the hotel’s crest and name. At intervals the air conditioner cut in above the radiators’ low hum.

Sterile enough, Karen thought, should it be necessary, to perform an operation.

Burcher.

Cormack.

Alex Williams.

Charlie Frost.

Karen had made her report first, bringing them up to speed on her team’s progress: the links between Dennis Broderick and Gordon Dooley; the evidence that placed Valentyn Horak and two others on their way to Stansted inside the van Broderick had leased at Dooley’s request; Stuart Dyer at the wheel of the second vehicle – Dyer who placed five of Dooley’s known associates at the place where Horak and two others were tortured and probably killed.