Ambush (12 page)

His eyes took in the shape under the glow of his headlights.

A thin, scantily clad young girl, maybe seventeen, white legs and arms, hair matted and caked over her face. She seemed to be dead.

Flynn saw the blood-filled hypodermic needle hanging loosely from the soft flesh inside her right arm, a belt used as a tourniquet wrapped around her bicep.

And the dribble of vomit from her mouth.

‘Shit.'

Flynn dropped to his knees beside her, turned her gently on to her side and stuck two fingers into her throat to clear her airway of the porridge-like sick. There was no retching and Flynn saw the girl wasn't breathing at all. She had flopped like a shattered doll. He rolled her back on to her back, checked for a pulse: none.

For Flynn the next few minutes were an autopilot blur of using the CPR training that had been drilled into him, pounding her chest, breathing into her mouth, watching the chest rise and fall, checking the pulse, while at the same time shouting for an ambulance over the radio.

He was later told that the time which elapsed between his first frantic transmission and the arrival of the ambulance was twenty-two minutes. During that period, the passage of time for him varied considerably. Sometimes it felt as though he was being swept away in a vortex and the seconds raced by; other times were like treading through thick, warm Blackpool rock as time slowed, almost stopped, even seemed to go backwards.

He pushed. He breathed. He spat out her sick, retching himself, but he kept going, willing the girl to live and never once contemplating the medical implications for himself – the possibility of contracting a horrible disease or infection.

And a year later – or was it just seconds? – the ambulance did arrive, and still he kept going until the paramedics eased him away and took over with breathing devices, defibrillators and cool skills. Flynn liked paramedics.

He slumped back, watching, gasping for his own breath, feeling his pounding heart crashing against his insides like waves before eventually subsiding to normal, though he sat there in the alley feeling more exhausted than if he'd just completed one of his tri-weekly workouts.

The remainder of the shift was a blur of police activity. Flynn was run ragged by a succession of incidents, including bursting into a bedsit with other officers to arrest a suspected robber. While doing all this Flynn ensured that comms kept a check on the progress of the girl from the alley and kept him up to date since, unless something transpired that meant he had to go to the hospital on another job, he was too busy to get there and check himself.

He finished his tour at seven a.m., bleary-eyed and wanting bed. But first he decided to check on the girl. He drove up to A&E at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, tucking his car tightly into the space reserved for ambulances only.

Flynn was a well-known figure at the hospital.

He had purposely nurtured the A&E staff so he had a regular brew spot which could also double as a good source of information. Many of the nurses, male and female, went weak-kneed at the sight of him – and not just because he could be charming. He had also made it his business to get to know the very harassed and overworked doctors.

‘Heroin overdose,' the junior doctor explained. They were standing in one of the cubicles looking at the girl whose life he had saved. She was linked to monitors reading her vital signs and drips were inserted via cannulas into veins in both her arms. She was not moving and had a deathly pallor and if the monitors hadn't said otherwise, Flynn would have thought he was looking at a corpse. ‘And a lot of booze,' the doctor added.

‘Thought I tasted whisky,' Flynn said, making a smacking noise with his tongue and recalling spitting out a lot of unpleasantness. ‘Did I do OK?' he asked.

‘You did exactly the right thing … well done,' the doctor said. ‘You saved her life.'

‘That's OK, then.'

The doctor checked her watch. ‘I'm off duty in ten minutes.' She eyed Flynn lustfully. ‘You could save my life too, if you wanted.'

Inwardly he cringed. This was an ongoing, playful thing he had with this rather gorgeous lady doctor. Both knew it would never happen, even though they had exchanged numbers before.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Happily married.'

The older Flynn, the tough-as-nails sportfishing skipper, now recollected that comment with sad cynicism.

He had thought he was happily married; at that point in his life he was certain of it.

He had left Santiago sleeping again and was walking along the promenade in Santa Eulalia, unable to put his thoughts into logical order. The news of Jerry Tope's death had completely smashed him.

He had got to thinking about Janie Miller, the zapped-out drug addict he'd saved from certain death in an alleyway in Blackpool, and her tenuous link to Operation Ambush.

After that night shift and ducking the advances of the lovely doctor, the young Flynn slept well for eight hours. In those days, he did sleep very well. He was up before four in the afternoon and before he began his next shift at seven p.m. he went back to BVH to check on the girl. He found she had been transferred to a ward.

She was propped up and looked very weak but better than when he'd found her. There was a tint of colour in her cheeks, but little else.

Flynn introduced himself. ‘Thought I'd see how you were getting on.'

‘You saved me,' she whispered. Her voice had a rasp to it.

He shrugged modestly. Now, with fluids inside her, despite the prominent cheekbones – the result of addiction rather than bone structure – he saw she was pretty and had wonderful, deep blue eyes.

‘I assume it wasn't an intentional overdose?' he guessed.

‘I don't know. Maybe. Not sure. Could have been.'

‘At least you're alive to fight another day.'

‘Whatever,' she sighed. ‘How can I thank you? We can fuck when I'm out of here, if you want. Free.'

Flynn laughed. ‘No … you can thank me by going into rehab … I'm told counsellors are queuing up to see you. I know there's a place at Marton Hall … please take it.'

‘OK, I will,' she promised.

Flynn held her gaze. ‘But I do want something else.'

‘What?' she whispered hoarsely, afraid, knowing.

‘The name of your dealer.'

She never told him, but she did become a good informant for him and although she did attempt rehab, she never kicked the habit either. She had a good in-depth knowledge of the local drug scene, who the low level dealers were, a few names further up the food chain, and she occasionally fed Flynn tasty scraps about dealers not directly connected to her.

She had been the one who, several years later, when Flynn had become a hard-arsed DS on the drug squad, had given him the information about a drugs pick-up in London, bound for Lancashire. She claimed her information had simply been an overheard conversation in a pub called Fat Billy's and, though pressed, she had remained tight-lipped about names and identities.

She lived on the top floor of a council block on the Shoreside estate, one of Blackpool's poorest, most deprived areas.

Since Flynn had first met her, Janie Miller had gone unsuccessfully through numerous rehab schemes, emerging clean and full of hope for a few days until she slid back into the life, then plunged downhill like a skier. She had lived with several abusive men and had three children by three different fathers; she was not sure which child belonged to which man, though she did not really care.

Flynn never gave up on her though he did realize she was a lost cause and beyond help, but when he burst into her flat on the night his two colleagues were murdered, his patience with her had all but evaporated.

As his six-three frame crashed through the flimsy door, kicking it off its hinges, her current man friend rose to the challenge of the intruder.

Flynn put him down with one blow – a cross punch – and stepped over his moaning body as the unfortunate man clutched his crushed nose. He grabbed Janie from the tatty sofa and carried her into the bedroom, slamming her against the wall, which moved like dodgy scenery. ‘Names,' he snarled into her face.

She begged for mercy, pleaded innocence, sobbing with big, body-racking gulps.

He slammed her again. Everything rattled, even the bones in her skinny body.

‘Two of my mates are dead, Janie … I need names, now.'

‘I don't know, I don't know …'

Flynn lifted her so their faces were aligned. He could smell her body odours, cheap perfume, her breath.

‘I fuckin' swallowed your vomit to save your life. Names, Janie, or every shithouse drug dealer in this town will know you've been my snitch for the last ten years … two cops shot dead.'

‘Let me go, let me go.'

Flynn released her with a contemptuous flick of his fingers. She slithered down the wall, her tiny skirt rising up above her thighs to reveal a lack of underwear.

‘Fuck you,' he said, turning away. No matter how much he wanted to, he could not hurt her.

As he reached the door, she gasped, ‘Brian Tasker.'

‘Who the hell's Brian Tasker?' He turned back.

‘Biggest drug lord in the country. He kills people.'

‘Tell me.' Flynn squatted in front of her and dragged a pillow from the bed so she could cover herself.

‘He's expanding … taking over … his gang, his organization, whatever you want to call it … honest, I did, I just heard a conversation … I was shooting up in a gents' cubicle in a bog in a pub in town … they didn't know I was there. They shoulda checked the shitters, but they didn't.'

‘Who?'

‘It were Don Braceford and this Tasker guy … he'd been about a bit … he were a big deal. Half o' what they said I couldn't remember anyway, except the name of the yard because it were my name – Miller's Yard. And I'd heard of Tottenham and I just passed it on to you. Rest were down to you. Said Will Carney were going down with Tasker.'

Flynn nodded. Carney was the low level shithead he'd recognized in the motorway service area – now one of the killers.

‘You won't tell Braceford, will you?'

‘Where can I find him?'

Flynn knew Braceford, but their paths had yet to cross. Braceford had been the subject of numerous unsuccessful police operations because he was a tricky, devious bastard. He was close to the top of Flynn's to-do list, a well-known quality dealer on the Fylde coast, the area of Lancashire encompassing Lytham, St Annes, Blackpool and all the way up to Fleetwood.

Flynn returned to the living room, where Janie's current beau was sitting up looking very sorry for himself, with a tea towel pressed to his face. He cowered as Flynn stepped towards him.

Jack Hoyle lounged by the broken front door. He arched his eyebrows questioningly at Flynn, who nodded.

As they left the flat Flynn took out his mobile phone and called Jerry Tope.

T
hose were the days when Flynn had no need to hold the sword of revelation (concerning infidelity) over Jerry Tope's head. Both were cops, and Flynn had every right to access information about villains via the intelligence system, unless it was restricted for some reason.

That said, Flynn's phone call at that particular time of day was still unwelcome.

Tope was busy in his spare room, the one doubling as a study-cum-mini-brewery. He was dealing with some delicate ingredient mixing, putting together his favourite home-brewed wine of dandelion and nettle, and disinfecting bottles.

As Flynn and Hoyle ran from Janie's flat and leapt into their tired, well-travelled Vauxhall, which was almost devoid of fuel after their long, fast journey from London, Flynn had his phone to his ear, calling Tope's home number. He knew Tope – completely unofficially, and way ahead of the rest of the force back then – had remote access to Lancashire Constabulary's computer mainframe from his house. At that time the organization was terrified of the internet and staff were only gradually being given permission on a very limited basis to access the World Wide Web from their work stations, let alone their homes. Unless, of course, you were called Jerry Tope, who bypassed everything because he could. He was way ahead in the internet game, already able to use it to access the mainframe from home, something which would come eventually for other officers, mainly those of higher rank. If he had been found out, it could have meant being disciplined and might even have cost him his job.

Flynn only knew this big secret because Tope had become very loose-lipped one night on his home brew. And it was going to prove useful now for a bit of quick out-of-hours digging.

‘Jerry? Me,' Flynn said breathlessly as the phones connected.

‘Do you know what time it is?' Tope responded instantly. ‘I'm busy disinfecting.'

‘I know the time, you shiny-arsed bastard,' Flynn responded, using the cute colloquial term for headquarters-based office wallahs. ‘Two cops are dead and I need some information now.'

‘Two cops?' Flynn heard something clatter in the background. ‘Do I know them?'

Flynn said yes, told him their names.

‘Shit, what can I do?' Tope asked.

‘You can plug that dinky computer of yours into the mains, or whatever you do, and get me some information now.'

‘I'm not at my desk, you know,' Tope said coyly. ‘I'm at home.'

‘Don't bullshit me, Jerry. I know you can get into the system from there; you told me, remember?'

‘Oh, yeah,' Tope muttered unhappily. ‘You haven't told anyone else, have you?'

‘Not yet. Now get on the laptop and do some gardening. I need addresses for Don Braceford and I want you to dig into a guy called Brian Tasker, could be from London.'

‘Got it. Give me five minutes. I need to log in.'

‘I'll call you back in ten,' Flynn said and ended the call.

He looked at Hoyle, who said, ‘What do we do?'