Bad Blood (30 page)

‘Are you saying …?’

‘Supposition.’ Phillips leant forwards, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘How did you guys know to stop Budgeon? How come he was stopped by
armed
police? The take wasn’t a routine bust by any means.’

‘Intel?’

‘No. Back then it was all so primitive and anyway, their little network was sewn up tight, held together by a combination of reward and punishment. Listen, I heard a story once about a lad who grassed up a small-time dealer – the dealer was one of the little men at the end of the supply chain – apparently the lad got taken to a remote spot up the Tamar at low tide. Budgeon and Chaffe took one of those U-shaped bike locks and clamped the lad’s neck to a block of concrete with a ring bolt set in the top. They took him out on the mud and dropped the block. Then they went back and sat on the bank, cracked open a couple of tinnies and waited for the tide to come in. They go home and come back at the next low tide to remove the body.’

‘Sounds like something dreamt up to scare people.’

‘Yeah. Except for the before and after pictures which circulated in the local pubs for weeks afterwards.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Doesn’t save. I know.’ Phillips necked some more of his beer. ‘So it wasn’t down to good policing that Budgeon got caught. No, Budgeon and Chaffe walked into a trap. Maybe they didn’t even realise the cocaine was in the boot, but the charlie was in such a large quantity that even if Chaffe hadn’t gone mental it would have ensured they both went away for a long time.’

‘So Fallon grassed them up?’

‘I doubt it was as clear-cut and he certainly wouldn’t have done it himself. Probably just a got a mate to drop a few words here and there. A warning about the gun.’

‘And the cocaine? That was a lot of money to throw away.’

‘I shouldn’t think Fallon thought like that. He would have called it something different. An investment in his future perhaps?’

‘Do you have any evidence for this hypothesis?’

‘No, but a paper trail must exist. Someone in the force set up the take and can only have planned the operation on the word of someone else. The rumour is they did very well out of it too. Then again there always seems to be a rumour or two flying around when it comes to the police and organised crime. You’ll need to do some digging your end to find out who. Mean time – if I am reading you right about Owers and Redmond – I’d say Fallon’s original investment has just gone deep into the red.’

Savage had meant to go straight home after the meeting with Phillips, but instead she decided to return to the station. The reporter had intimated that Ricky Budgeon and Stuart Chaffe had been dumped in it by Fallon and that the intel for the bust came through a police officer on the force. She had a pretty good idea who might have been the police conduit for the information and a ten-minute search through the old records relating to the motorway bust proved her right. The informant had been one Dave Dowdney, now the owner of Moor to Shore Taxis, and the detective who had elicited the information from Dowdney and passed across the date and time of the car trip was a young DC called Philip Davies.

Savage drove back from town feeling a touch queasy on account of the beer, the curry and the confirmation of her suspicions concerning Davies. When she got in she found Pete and Stefan in the kitchen nursing a couple of beers too. Pete looked unimpressed when she opined the virtues of the Eastern Eye.

‘You might have got a takeaway for us,’ he said, pointing to the remains of their own dinner. ‘We had pasta and pesto plus some old garlic bread we found in the bottom of the freezer. Best before May 1872.’

‘The trouble with you,’ she said, as she went over and put an arm around her husband, ‘is that you spent too many years having what amounts to a personal chef on hand twenty-four seven.’

‘True, but there’s nobody to cuddle at night.’

‘So you say. I have my doubts though. I am sure last year you were bunk-hopping all the way from Devonport to Tierra de Fuego and back again. What say you Stefan?’

‘Don’t involve me,’ Stefan said, holding up his hands. ‘I only work here, but speaking from personal experience, when I’m on a yacht I never mix business with pleasure.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Savage said. ‘I’ve seen the guys you race with. Big, hairy and their personal hygiene consists of a wipe down with a J-cloth every few days. Talking of which, I am going to go upstairs and have a soak in the bath while you two talk shipboard romance.’

Savage left them arguing over the merits of allowing women on boats and went upstairs. While she ran the bath she pondered over what Phillips had told her and the discovery of Davies as the lynchpin in the action which had resulted in the arrest of Budgeon and Chaffe. She slipped out of her clothes and into the mass of white bubbles.

Davies had moved up a couple of ranks since the incident, all the time becoming more and more notorious as the man who had his finger on the pulse of the Plymouth underworld. During the intervening period he had spent a couple of years on the Met before returning to Devon and flirting with SOCIT – the Serious and Organised Crime Investigation Team. Savage knew he’d never got on well when on assignment with them. The reasoning was he wasn’t a team player and couldn’t knuckle down to the painstakingly detailed work required. Another theory occurred to Savage: Davies was still in league with Fallon. It would explain the relative failure of operation after operation to catch the big fish behind the small-scale dealers.

If Davies had had a part in helping Fallon to build his drug empire then Jackman had too. Jackman had served on the old Police Authority and now he was a member of the Police and Crime Panel, the body which held the Police and Crime Commissioner to account. The position gave Jackman access to privileged information. Between the two of them Davies and Jackman probably knew – or could find out – everything there was to know about police operations. And that included operation
Sternway
. Which meant Fallon had likely known about Redmond’s role as an informer from the beginning. Any intelligence Redmond had supplied was tainted.

And Riley?

Now the nonsense text message he’d sent made sense and from what Dan Phillips had told her Budgeon and Chaffe could well be involved in his abduction. The reason had to be to do with
Sternway
. The two of them had tortured and killed Owers, probably for whatever financial information he had on Fallon. Redmond had met a similar end. What fate might befall Riley Savage tried to put from her mind.

What she couldn’t put from her mind, no matter how hard she tried, was the video Jackman possessed. She felt ashamed that instead of concentrating on Riley’s predicament she was focusing on her own, but Jackman could end her career, put her behind bars, maybe even break up her family. Somehow she had to stop him.

Savage let herself slip down into the water so only her eyes, nose and mouth were exposed. She closed her eyes and let the warmth cocoon her, relishing the sense of isolation at the same time as she heard the pulse, pulse, pulse of the blood in her ears.

Kemp hadn’t slept easy for the first few hours, the man coughing his guts up. Not blood though. Riley thought that was, if not a good sign, then better than it might have been. Later Riley heard snoring, Kemp far away in the land of nod. Somewhere nicer than a freezing cold stable anyway. Riley spread a layer of straw over the man’s prone form and wondered what would be left of him come tomorrow.

He needn’t have worried because Kemp slept most of the next day too, occasionally coughing and then muttering something in his half-sleep. The rest appeared to do him good, because hours after the light had gone he woke, the cough back, but Kemp cheery. All things considered.

‘Drink?’ Kemp said. Riley helped him over to the water trough. ‘Prefer red, mate, but if white is all you’ve got …’

Kemp spluttered as he drank, coughing phlegm into the trough.

‘Sorry about that. I’ve contaminated your fine cellar.’

Riley wondered how the man could keep up the good spirits. Maybe he’d just spent too much time undercover. It could get to you in the end. Or maybe, like Riley, he was losing it.

Riley wanted to know what had happened, how Kemp had got here. Kemp settled back in the straw and made himself comfortable.

‘I’m back up north, couple of days off, sitting watching the lunchtime news and there is Redmond, face beaming from the TV – only from what the reporter is saying he’s not going to be doing that again.’

‘He’s dead?’

‘Yup. I call Hardin and he tells me the latest. Redmond’s been cut open. “Eviscerated”, according to the pathologist. Hardin wants to know if we’re secure and I want to know too. If we’ve been blown then there is no way I want to come back down to Devon. Cream teas, lovely coastline, Dartmoor? You can bloody forget it. You had no idea about Redmond being our man so it is down to the Chief Constable, Hardin, a DI at Exeter and DI Davies. No way is it the CC and I think we can discount Hardin, which leaves the facilitator at Exeter and Davies. I sat in a room with Davies once; too much aftershave. Lynx, I think. Whatever, it didn’t disguise the smell. You might not have pies down this end of the world, but you’ve got pasties and I reckon Davies has his fingers in a load of them.’

‘So Fallon finds out about Redmond from Davies and then takes him out? Makes sense.’

‘Sort of. Except Hardin says they aren’t convinced Fallon is in the frame. He reckons the murder is connected to another killing and most likely nothing to do with
Sternway
. He spins me a story about Redmond being an innocent caught up in some vigilante business, something to do with some paedophile. I don’t buy that, but what-the-hell, if I don’t come back down here then
Sternway
ends with Redmond’s death. So I pack Marty Kemp into a suitcase and whizz down the motorway.’

‘Got it.’ Riley pulled some more straw over himself. ‘But I don’t—’

‘Wait. This is the bit where I cock up. Big time.’

‘OK. Go on.’

‘I check into my usual place, the Premier Inn at Marsh Mills. It’s not the Hilton, but the place is inconspicuous and I can turn up and sit in the car park, make a booking on my laptop and then stroll in.’

‘And that was a mistake?’

‘Total fuck-up to return there. I just wasn’t thinking right.’

‘Redmond.’

‘Yes.’ Kemp half sat up, propping himself on an elbow. ‘Redmond had my mobile number and my name. The only other thing he knew about me was that I stayed at the hotel because I met him twice in the pub next door. When he was being sliced up he must have come out with the one thing he thought might save him.’

‘You.’

‘Yeah. Little fucking me.’

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 24th January. 9.15 a.m.

Thursday morning and Savage went to find DS Gareth Collier to brief him on the Budgeon angle. She told him about the relationship with Fallon and explained that Budgeon may well have returned to Plymouth with vengeance on his mind. Collier listened but by the time she had finished he looked as if he was about to have kittens.

‘This lot,’ he said with a sweep of his arms; Savage not knowing if he meant the people in the room or the array of whiteboards and other incident room paraphernalia. ‘All in one huge melting pot. Riley as a misper plopped in as well. Plus now you’re telling me there’s a new guy, Budgeon. Know what I’m going to call it?’

‘No,’ Savage said.

‘Operation
ByTheSeatOfOurPants
. Because it’s a joke, right? All this.’ Another wave of his arms. ‘
Corulus
,
Brougham
,
Sternway
. Finding Riley. Budgeon. Forget any semblance of organisation, forget trying to process actions in a meaningful way. No, shove everything in a pile and that sucker Collier will sort it out.’

Savage listened as Collier went to outline the problems. His arcs of probability had been distorted, he said. New nodes were springing up left, right and centre. It was total evidential overload. Savage smiled and tried to appear sympathetic. Collier’s standard procedure was to moan about things for a minute or two and then get on and do the impossible.

‘You know,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking you should just let me have the policy book and I’ll crap on a couple of pages and give it to Hardin with my resignation.’

‘Will you reconsider if I get you a coffee?’ Savage said.

‘Will I …?’ Collier reached up and smoothed the fuzz on top of his head. ‘Oh bloody hell. Alright then.’

Collier began barking out orders while Savage went to get him a coffee. By the time she returned she was pleased to see officers bent to keyboards and working hard, a photo of Stuart Chaffe now up on one of the whiteboards.

‘Chaffe’s the initial target,’ Collier said. ‘The evidence Layton found in the van puts him at the centre. He had something to do with the little girl and Owers, Riley was in his van and Ricky Budgeon is his mate. We’ve got nothing much on Budgeon so action point two is research on him, but find Chaffe, and I reckon we find Budgeon and Riley.’

Collier left an unsaid question hanging in the air. Savage could see by the expressions in the room that other officers were thinking along the same lines: why the hell had she let Chaffe go? She didn’t say anything and saw faces turn back to screens. She’d mucked up and she knew it was because she had been distracted. She could blame the crash Calter and Enders had been involved in, sure, but what had really made her take her eyes off the ball was Alec bloody Jackman and the damned video of her and Matthew Harrison.

She left the team to it, returned to her office and sat staring out of the window, sipping bitter coffee from a paper cup.

The video was dynamite and Jackman knew it. He’d want to extract the maximum value from blackmailing Savage. Given his involvement with Fallon that could only mean
Sternway
. Which indirectly meant Riley. And that meant she had to bite the bullet.

Jackman answered after a couple of rings, interrupting her attempt to say anything. He had space in his diary for a ten-thirty a.m. meeting. The cafe on the Hoe. He’d see her there.