Blood Substitute (13 page)

‘I'll have a Diet Coke with ice,' I said to the barman quite loudly through a length of fishing net that had snared a catch of plastic crabs.

A dart thunked into the wall a good two inches from the board and it was probably due to the resultant demeanour of the thrower that no one laughed.

‘What the hell are
you
doing here?' he roughly demanded, but well in character – that is, rough – I was pleased to note.

‘Well, with no real man to keep me company I've come looking for someone,' I drawled in a little-girl voice.

The whole bar went ‘OooOOOooo', falsetto.

Patrick handed the rest of his darts to someone, came over and slowly stretched out a hand and undid the zip a little more, a smile twitching his lips. I slapped the hand away whereupon he grabbed me, kissed me – yes, roughly – and bundled me out the door to the cheers and some obscene encouragement from those within.

I miss working undercover for MI5 too.

‘Ingrid, what the hell
are
you doing here?' he enquired in his own voice when we were at a safe distance. He noticed Carrick. ‘No, James, please don't explain. She bamboozled you into driving her over.'

‘I'm glad she did as I do have an interest,' the DCI replied soberly. ‘Cliff Morley was a friend of mine.'

‘So he was,' Patrick said, a hand momentarily on the other's shoulder.

He told me later that he had seen Carrick in the pub but decided to say nothing, wondering if the DCI was working and might not want to be side-tracked. I reckoned this to be not
quite
the truth: undercover, unrecognized, slumming it, playing darts for money with a pint on the bar – heaven.

Carrick had been told that Slaterford and Sons' warehouse was situated in an area due for redevelopment three streets away from the pub ‘towards the water'. Due to the fact that water seemed to be in more than one direction from where we started looking and there was a warren of little roads we did not succeed at the first attempt, ending up in a cul-de-sac. We finally found ourselves, according to a faded sign on a wall, outside the correct building.

‘It looks derelict,' Patrick commented. ‘They're probably due to get a pile of money for the place to be turned into flats. More money laundering?'

‘It reminds me of criminal rat-holes in the East End docks before
they
were smartened up,' Carrick muttered.

I reckoned myself forgiven for my transgression having (a) appealed to Patrick's sense of humour, (b) sidetracked him into thinking about that panacea for a lot of things, sex, and (c) brought along meaningful reinforcements.

‘We could be barking up all kinds of wrong trees here,' Patrick said to Carrick. ‘Has Ingrid brought you up to date?'

‘Aye, and tall men or no, I too think it's most odd that a whole raft of folk should do a runner when a certain alarm goes off in a department store. I wish I knew where they went.'

‘We could put bugs under a few of the cars that Ingrid said were parked near the entrance and then set off the alarm again.'

‘True, but they could well smell a rat. And, don't forget, this isn't my case. I don't want to tread on Paul Reece's toes.'

‘Perhaps not, but that's not to say I can't consult with you regarding my brief and then stir things up a little. Anyway …' Patrick chuckled. ‘It looks as though Ingrid already has you on board.'

Which was because Ingrid has a lot more faith in brave Scots on the hoof than anyone thrashing away on a computer mouse at a desk in Portishead.

By the poor illumination provided by two street lights we could see that the building looked like a converted railway engine shed and, like the store, was mostly soot black. The windows of the ground floor had been bricked up, but in recent years as these were much cleaner than the rest of it. There were no visible exterior locks on the large wooden double doors fronting the road. The men gave these the briefest of glances, and, moving as one, set off to explore further.

Patrick suddenly turned to me. ‘Promise me that if things get nasty you'll take yourself off.'

‘I promise,' I said.

‘Oh, for a Challenger tank to drive through the front door,' I heard him say to himself as he and James went on ahead, following the outer wall into the darkness towards the edge of the wharf where I could hear water slapping against the jetty wall. I saw the flash of Patrick's tiny ‘burglar's' torch and then they had gone and there was just the smell of the sea and the night.

I went after them, slowly, as Patrick had the only source of light, and finished up by meeting them on their way back. The building was joined to a newer one next door and there was no way around. What had been rear and huge side doors were now, like the windows, bricked up.

‘I have a better idea,' I told them.

We went back round to the front.

As is so often the case, within one of the main doors was a smaller one and, along with the car parked nearby I had noticed a couple of minutes earlier, this smaller door boasted both key holes and a bell push. I shooed Patrick and James out of the immediate vicinity and then jabbed a finger on it, hearing a bell ring quite loudly somewhere within. Then, slow footsteps approached. A myriad bolts and locks were undone and then the door was yanked open.

‘Charlie?' said a man's voice.

‘No, I've lost my cat.' I snivelled. ‘I think she came in here.'

‘It can't have done. Shove off, you silly cow!'

The door started to close.

‘For God's sake, mister!' I wailed. ‘She's all I've got!'

The door opened a little again.

More calmly, I said, ‘She hasn't come home and I saw her sitting in the road out here earlier when the doors were open. Please let me come in and call her.'

‘It's more than my job's worth.'

‘I'll only stand just inside. She'll come if I call her.'

‘Lady, the people who own the place'll skin me alive and nail it to this door if I let you in.'

Still unable to see to whom I was talking I sort of melted against the door jamb. ‘I know you're a kind man really.
Please.
'

There was quite a long silence punctuated by wheezy male breathing. Then he said, ‘OK, but make it damned quick.'

I went into what must be a confined space as it was close and fuggy with the smell of sweat and cigarettes. It was too dark to see much but the night-watchman, whoever he was, was a dark shape shambling ahead of me. We immediately emerged into a larger area, our footsteps echoing.

‘Go on, then! Call your bloody cat!' the man growled.

‘I can't see where I'm going,' I told him.

‘Just call! Or I'll throw you out!'

‘Mif … fy! Mif … fy!' I bawled into a huge gloomy cavern-like space, my voice resonating around the roof. ‘Miffy!'

Predictably, nothing moved. Well, perhaps a rat or two did.

‘But I can't see if she's here!' I cried, getting upset again. ‘She's probably sitting somewhere too scared to come out because you're here.'

‘The lights stay off!' Raising his voice then brought on a fit of coughing.

My eyes were getting used to the gloom and I could just make out roof lights high up above me, moonlight penetrating through the dirt of ages and cobwebs.

‘Look, there's a consignment due any time now,' the man agonized. ‘If the boss finds you here …' He broke off, seemingly, it was too horrible to think about.

Only seemingly; in actual fact Patrick had just, gently, fingered his collar.

‘What's going on here then?' he said in chummy fashion.

‘Who might you be?' the man quavered.

‘Someone more difficult than your boss should you not now start talking really helpfully. But since you ask I'm from the Serious and Organized Crime Agency and my friend here is a DCI from Bath.' Turning his prisoner around to face him and shining the light in his face, thus illuminating several days' growth of beard and bloodshot eyes, he then asked the man his name.

‘Bill Poundbury.'

‘What gives here, then?'

‘I – I just look after the place at night, that's all.'

‘Why at night?'

‘They said because of vandals – they try to get in.'

‘They'd have a job to – the place is like a fortress. What's stored here?'

‘Stuff – you know, goods for the store.'

‘And your boss? Who's he?'

‘Why, the man in charge, the warehouse manager.'

‘What's his name?'

‘I – I don't know.'

‘You don't know! Tell the truth!'

‘It is the truth. He doesn't like people to know. You don't ask questions. Some of the people the top bods knock around with are really scary.'

‘Did you know a man called Ritter? Madderly Ritter?

‘No.'

‘Think!'

‘He – he might have been the bloke I took over from. I don't really know. Someone said whoever that was wasn't very bright and got killed in an accident when he was on holiday down in Devon. Please, guv, I don't know very much because I've only been here a few days.'

‘Do you know a man by the name of Kyle Jeffers?'

‘No, never heard of him.'

The questioning ended abruptly when Patrick fleetingly gripped the man's neck and then lowered his inert form to the floor.

‘Did you
have
to do that?' Carrick protested, whispering for some reason. ‘It sounds as though he might be perfectly innocent.'

‘Quite,' Patrick said. ‘That's why I caught him when something fell on his head.' He flashed the torch around. ‘There, that one'll do – that box on the shelf there.' He handed the torch to me and lifted it down. It was far heavier than he expected and he could not control the descent, the unmarked box hitting the ground in a cloud of dust. In the beam from the torch we could see that the cardboard sides had split to reveal plastic-wrapped packets of what looked like plasticene.

‘What on earth's that?' Carrick wanted to know.

‘Probably explosive,' Patrick replied. ‘It looks like Semtex.'

A large vehicle of some kind drew up outside.

‘Did you shut the door?' I hissed, wanting to put as much distance between myself and this place as possible for several very pressing reasons.

‘No,' James said. ‘In case the hinges squeaked.'

There was no time to do anything but conceal ourselves. This proved to be difficult to begin with because of what James would no doubt call the gloaming but when several people had crashed into the warehouse, shouting, and someone switched on all the lights we went to ground much more thoroughly.

In the first few seconds of brightness I had received a fleeting impression of the warehouse walls lined with metal shelving, the floor untidily stacked with packing crates, boxes and pallets loaded with goods. Then I had burrowed my way beneath a shelf unit and lay, my nose inches from what did indeed look like rat droppings, trying to remember anything I might know about the properties of Semtex but having an idea it needed a detonator. I had no clue as to the whereabouts of the two men. As for my undertaking to Patrick to head for the hills if things got nasty – well, it was a bit late now, wasn't it?

‘The watchman's here – been knocked out by a box!' a man shouted. ‘But what the hell was he doing with the door open?'

‘Probably heard us arriving,' someone else yelled quite close to where I was hiding, making me start.

‘He usually waits until he's been given a signal,' said the first man.

‘Or, disobeying orders, he'd sneaked outside for a fag and shot back in when he heard us coming,' yet another man said. ‘Get any keys or things that could identify him out of his pockets and chuck him in the van. We'll get the truth out of him later. No, before you do that check the whole place for intruders. We don't know how long it's been wide open – someone might have sneaked in.'

A new pair of desert boots squeaked by only a foot or so from where I lay and went off into the distance. It occurred to me that the watchman was probably playing dead as the method of rendering him insensible that Patrick normally utilises only results in unconsciousness for less than a minute and, Carrick really ought to be told, leaves no bruising or other unpleasant after-effects. I was hoping he would make his escape when no one was looking. Otherwise, bless his tarred-up lungs, we would have to prevent what could well be his demise.

Feet paced about, moved things and, judging by the sounds, climbed up the shelving. I guessed that there were three doing the searching, while the boss – was he the tall man we were after? – stood waiting. Two or three minutes went by and then, not very far from where I lay, someone sneezed. Immediately, there were the thumps of approaching running footsteps, I actually felt the vibration through the floor.

‘Got you, you bastard!' someone yelled amid scuffling noises.

And, in the next second a hand emerged through small packets of some kind on my left, burrowing, groped, and grabbed me by the material of the sleeve of my jacket. I stayed quite still: it was a hand I recognized.

‘Who the hell are you?' shouted the voice I assumed to belong to the boss.

‘DCI James Carrick, Bath CID. Release me this instant or you'll find yourselves under arrest.'

The man laughed, aped dutifully by his ‘assistants', and then said, ‘What are you doing here?'

‘You've been under surveillance for some time,' Carrick said.

‘You're lying!'

‘It's the truth. I was passing and saw the door was open and your man some way along the street, smoking. I thought I'd take a quick look around.'

‘You're a damned fool then,' said the other coldly. ‘But I'm not risking talking to you here.' There was the sound of another scuffle. Then, ‘Get him out of here. Right out. Take him to the usual place, the secure area, and hold him there until I come. We might have to stay there for a while until things quieten down. Meanwhile I'll find out exactly what they know about us before we get rid of him.'