One Dead Witness (19 page)

‘
What girl’s that?’ Tapperman responded. ‘She’s gone,
vamoose.
Disparue.
As soon as we turned our heads she was away. I think she was
warned off, too.’

Kruger rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He looked bitterly
across the table at Tapperman, who shrugged apologetically. ‘So all
in all, the Miami Police Department have made a complete fuck-up.
Is it true to say that?’

Tapperman nodded happily, feeling that an opposing viewpoint
would have been detrimental to his health.

‘
Who was the other fat guy, the one who passed out? The one at
the head end of the girl? The one who was forcing her to suck his
cock?’

Heads turned. Several touchy customers made ‘tutting’
noises.

Tapperman coughed nervously. ‘A British guy, name of Charles
Gilbert. One of Bussola’s, business associates in the leisure
industry. Operates out of the north of England. The little we know
about him suggests he’s clean. He was high as a kite but because
Bussola acted so quickly we didn’t even get a chance to speak to
him. Apparently he’s flying out early tomorrow, back to
Manchester.’

‘
What a complete mess,’ Kruger groaned. He churned over the
prospect of civil litigation together with the words Bussola had
spieled out about having regrets. ‘Fuck that bitch Felicity for
getting me into this.’

Tapperman was vaguely aware of the reasons why Kruger had been
watching the mobster. Gravely, he said, ‘If I were you I might be
bothered about Felicity’s safety right now. If Mario adds this up
and starts asking questions, he’ll get mightily pissed with her
answers, I reckon.’

Kruger’s eyelids snapped shut with an involuntary spasm as the
implications of Tapperman’s words hit him. He hung his head
despondently. ‘You’re right,’ he said quietly.

Although Danny believed she had amassed enough evidence, most
of which was hearsay, to recommend that Joe Lilton should be
refused a firearms certificate, she did not succeed.

She presented a very detailed report about Lilton’s ongoing
violence towards his wife which had been logged over a period of
several months. However, the powers-that-be decided it would be too
much trouble and cost to refuse the application because if Lilton
appealed against the decision he had immediate right of appeal to a
Crown Court.

In those days - the early 1980s - the ownership of firearms
was not seen as too big a deal. The horror of Hungerford had yet to
happen and the tragedy of Dunblane was completely unthinkable.
People didn’t do such things, did they?

Therefore Lilton got his certificate, got his guns - a
thirty-eight and a forty-five - joined a gun club and to all
intents and purposes, became a model gun-owner.

Danny knew that not long after her visit to Lilton’s house in
Osbaldeston, he and his wife split up and later divorced. Beyond
that she knew nothing more - until now, here in the present,
because she had bumped into Joe Lilton again.

Remarried to Ruth - who seemed decent, if highly strung - and
stepfather to Claire, runaway and deeply unhappy child.

Nor was Danny happy. There was something at the back of her
mind, niggling away. Something from all those years ago ... yet she
could not pinpoint it.

At least she was up to date with Joe Lilton and feeling smug
that the new government had decided to ban private ownership of
handguns. In a couple of months’ time, Lilton, along with thousands
of others, would be obliged to hand in his weapons to the
police.

She stretched her arms and sat back.

It was eight o’clock. Time to go home.

She had spent more or less the whole day at her desk - with
the occasional excursion to research Joe Lilton - head down,
beavering way, trying to clear her work so there would be no
earthly reason for her ever to return to this office once she had
been promoted.

She had seen nothing of Jack Sands. He might have been in his
office, might not. She did not care. All she wanted to do was
forget him and the last couple of days, and get on with her life.
Hopefully he had got the message and would leave her alone in
future.

When he walked into the office at that very moment, as cocky
and cool as she had ever seen him, her heart juddered.

Fortunately a couple of other people were in the office
too.

Sands addressed everyone.

‘
Just thought you’d like to be informed - for those who know
him, that is - I’ve just received a preliminary message from
Control Room.’ Here he looked directly at Danny. ‘And you’ll be
very interested in this, Dan: Louis Vernon Trent has escaped from
prison and in the process he killed two paramedics and a prison
guard, and is suspected of a firebomb attack on another inmate’s
cell which killed four people. He could well be making his way back
to his home town. Here. Blackpool.’

Danny gasped.

That was all she needed.

To Steve Kruger it seemed almost a lifetime ago since he had
been walking across that parking lot, eagerly anticipating the
planned barbecue and beer with his son and grandchildren. The
barbecue had obviously been cancelled and they had all taken a
raincheck. At least, for now, Kruger could achieve one of his
ambitions, and that was to get his mouth round the neck of a bottle
of Hurricane Reef Lager.

He screeched the Chevy into the driveway of his Bal Harbour
villa, gearing himself up to the coolness of the beer working its
delicious way down his throat. He tapped in the alarm code and went
in through the front door of his home, of which he was extremely
proud.

He tossed his jacket and tie onto the staircase, kicked off
his shoes, and loosening everything else, made his way directly to
the kitchen. He almost fainted with pleasure when he opened the
refrigerator door and a burst of frozen air hit him. He stood there
a few moments, basking. Then he grabbed a beer. A second later it
tumbled down his neck like an ice-cold mountain stream.

Most of the contents went down in that first pull.

‘
Jeez, that’s wonderful.’ He rolled the bottle across his
sweaty forehead.

Next he stripped off where he stood.

He made his way through the living room, to the patio door
which led out to the pool. He took a few steps across the hot
concrete and dived naked into the water, secure in the knowledge
the garden was not overlooked.

He did a graceful length underwater, turned whilst submerged
and swam back. With bursting lungs he surfaced at the point where
he had entered.

He did not expect to see the long black pair of female legs
standing on the poolside, slightly astride. The view stopped him
dead. He gulped, recognised them from previous discreet
observation, and his eyes travelled slowly up them to see that the
groin was covered by a pair of very tight shorts.

He looked further up.

There was a gap between the top of the shorts - exposing a
lovely flat stomach with a belly button to die for - and a button
T-shirt tied with a knot underneath the breasts.

‘
Myrna,’ Kruger said, puzzled. ‘What you doin’
here?’

She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t sleep, I guess. Too much goin’ on in
my head. Needed some sort of debrief. Mind if I join
you?’

‘
Be my guest.’ He realised she must be able to see that he was
completely naked.

Myrna undid the knot in her T-shirt and dragged it over her
head. She shimmied out of her shorts, discarding them and her
panties to one side. Then, for one beautiful moment, as she raised
her hands to a point above her head, Kruger was treated to a sight
he had only ever dreamt about. He had to admit, the reality was far
better than the imagination. The breasts tauter, the nipples
bigger, the tummy flatter and the legs longer.

She dived over him, and entered the pool with hardly a
ripple.

Kruger turned, ducked under the surface and pushed himself
away from the poolside, wondering what form the debrief would
take.

Everything going on in Danny’s life at that moment seemed to
be connected with ghosts from her past. People she thought had been
laid to rest.

First there was Joe Lilton, from fifteen years ago.

Then Jack Sands, a nightmare from her very recent
past.

Now here was Louis Vernon Trent a mere nine years in her
past.

Trent had been the first major criminal Danny had ever
arrested and put away for a long time. She had locked up plenty of
burglars and petty drugs dealers but Trent had been her first
biggie. He wasn’t a master criminal in the usual sense of the
phrase. He wasn’t driven by greed or the need to show off. He was
driven by a perverted and uncontrollable lust. Mainly for young
girls and occasionally for boys.

Because of this he was considered a danger to the
public.

That was why Trent was a biggie.

His arrest had been Danny’s passport to any specialist
department she chose. She plumped for Family Protection because she
felt it was the area in which she could do most good.

It had probably been the near-fatal injuries caused by Trent
to two young girls in one frenzied attack that had driven Danny in
the direction of the FPU. It gave her a burning desire to catch and
convict people like Trent who ruined young lives without a thought
for anything but their own sadistic pleasures.

Trent had been sentenced to seventeen years’ imprisonment,
with the Judge’s recommendation he serve the full term.

It wasn’t enough for Danny, but it would have to
do.

Seventeen years did not give back to even one of those girls
the chance of enjoying a healthy family life when she reached
adulthood. Nor did it give the other little girl the chance of ever
going to the toilet and not screaming in agony. Nor did it repay
the other thirty children he had molested in a reign of terror
lasting eighteen months.

But seventeen years would have to do, because the justice
system said so.

Seventeen years for thirty-two ruined lives.

Now he was back on the streets, no doubt with the intention of
resuming his activities.

Danny shivered at the thought.

She prayed he would not return to Blackpool, but knowing he
probably would - because he had unfinished business to attend to -
Danny decided that tomorrow she would make it her task to ensure
every police officer within a twenty-mile radius of Blackpool was
carrying an up-to-date photo of Trent.

Danny left her desk and walked to the lift. Whilst waiting for
its creaky arrival, she stared blandly at the buttons, picturing
Trent’s evil eyes.

Hearing clearly the voice that went with them. At the
conclusion of one of Danny’s interviews with Trent, nine years
before, he had said, quite blatantly at a point when Danny’s
interviewing partner had left the room briefly, ‘Guilty or not
guilty, Danny, one fine day I’m going to come back and kill you for
this.’

Her partner came back into the room to find Trent smiling
pleasantly at him, then at Danny for whom he added a salacious
wink.

She had nearly wet herself there and then, because she
believed him.

The lift arrived, the doors slid open, she stepped in and
pressed the ground-floor button. The doors began to
close.

At eighteen inches apart, Jack Sands contorted sideways
through the gap and a second later the doors were shut. Only he and
Danny were in the lift.

She cowered away from him in the confined space.

‘
Danny, I need to talk to you.’ He held out his arms. His face
had a look of total desperation and misery on it.

‘
Get away from me, Jack,’ she warned him. ‘I’ll knee you in the
balls again.’

‘
Whoa, okay, honey. But we need to talk. You know I love you
and I know you love me. You’re denying yourself. I need you and you
need me, so let’s stop pretending and get back to what we
were.’

‘
It’s over,’ Danny stated through gritted teeth. ‘Now leave me
alone.’

The lift clattered to a halt at the ground floor.

‘
Please, God, let there be someone waiting to get in,’ Danny
grovelled in her mind. Sands’s finger was pressed on the button for
the fifth floor and he was standing across the doors. He wasn’t
going to let her go anywhere.

Danny’s legs became wobbling strips of blubber when she
thought that somehow Sands had succeeded in preventing the doors
opening. An agonising couple of seconds passed. She eyed her
ex-lover fearfully ... until, thankfully, the doors opened. Several
people were in the corridor, waiting to get in. A gush of relief
flushed through her system.

Sands glanced over his shoulder, a look of rage on his face.
Danny took advantage of the moment to duck past him, shove her way
through the waiting people with a strained, ‘Excuse me,’ and head
for the exit.

Her legs, having turned back from blubber into muscle, carried
her swiftly down the corridor, past the entrance to the custody
office, out of the back door and into the rear yard.