Remains to be Seen (6 page)

‘It's not flame, it's chestnut. And you're trying to divert me with your compliments. You don't usually get this daft at work.'

‘You're right.' Percy affected to look apprehensively at the door of his office, as if he feared hidden listeners. ‘You're my Delilah, you are, threatening to undermine my position of trust.'

‘You've already lost your hair. And I don't see you bringing the temple of Chief Superintendent Tucker crashing about our ears.'

Percy contemplated that happy vision for a moment, his face suffused with a dreamy bliss. Then he shook his head and his shoulders in turn, as if to dismiss this Utopia from his mind. ‘If it comes off, we should have a couple of the major drug barons in our cells by tomorrow night. I can't tell you any more than that, because as of this minute I don't know any more myself, Detective Sergeant Blake.'

‘You've been getting your team ready for this operation.'

‘I've had an unofficial word with one or two of the boys, yes. They need to be aware that they might not be home for their evening meal tomorrow. I'm always the soul of consideration in these things, as you know.'

‘Several of the boys, in fact. And there's one female detective sergeant who so far hasn't heard a word about this. I'm giving you the opportunity to remedy that omission, DCI Peach.'

Percy had known from the start that this was why she was in his office, though he had enjoyed exercising his rarely used diversionary skills in the elaborate verbal minuet which had delayed it. He said stiffly, ‘I have to deploy my resources as I see fit. Chief Superintendent Tucker has directed me to do so.'

‘And you always give the utmost attention to Tommy Bloody Tucker's directives.'

‘Occasionally even the greatest idiots must be right. It's called the George Bush Law of Averages.'

Lucy decided that only directness would serve her now. ‘I want to be on that team tomorrow night.'

Percy Peach decided, on the other hand, that this was a moment for an uncharacteristic retreat into officialese. ‘It's possible that when I know more I shall be able to reconsider the matter.'

‘You don't intend to use me tomorrow night, do you?'

Percy sighed. ‘No, I don't. Lucy, this is one of those occasions when I want hard, reliable men around me.'

‘But not hard, reliable women.'

Percy eyed her delicious curves, but decided that this was not a moment to comment upon her lack of hardness. ‘We've already got the Armed Response Unit on standby. There'll likely be bullets flying about, tomorrow night.'

Lucy Blake's lips set into the thin, determined line he hadn't seen since the early days of their relationship. ‘You're taking Gordon Pickering and Clyde Northcott and Brendan Murphy in there. Three DCs: all three of them together haven't got the experience that I have.'

‘Three men who can handle themselves when the fists are flying. Each of them stronger than you, even when you're fired up.'

‘Like now, you mean? You're refusing to take me on an important assignment, just because I'm a woman.'

‘And there are places where I'd take you and not them. Places I do take you, all the time. All right, I'm saying this isn't the place for a woman. I'm paid to use my judgement, amongst other things.'

‘You're saying that a woman wouldn't be reliable like the men, in times of danger.'

‘She might. But the men wouldn't be reliable if I had a woman like you around. They'd be watching out for you, when I want them to watch their own backs. Not to mention mine.'

She recognized a certain logic in this, though she wasn't going to admit it to Percy. Men were sentimental creatures, at the best of times. Despite their normal tendencies for lust and irresponsibility, they were prone to outbursts of chivalry at the most inopportune moments. Lucy Blake was driven to an irritated, ‘This isn't equality, you know.'

‘I have to go in there with the best team I can muster. I have to back my own judgement about the selection of that team. I'm considering my own safety, as well as that of everyone else involved in this.'

‘And of course it wouldn't be the fact that you have a personal relationship with me that makes you want to make sure that I'm not in any danger.'

‘Of course it wouldn't. You wouldn't be going in there tomorrow even if you were the ugliest and most objectionable female I can think of. Even if you were Barbara Tucker, for instance.' He threw in Tucker's Brünnhilde-like wife in an attempt to lower the tension. ‘In fact especially not if it was Barbara Tucker. She'd present far too big a target.'

Lucy felt the corners of her mouth trying to crinkle. She knew now that she wasn't going to win this one. She repeated desperately, ‘This isn't equality, and you know it.'

‘You can always appeal to higher authority, if you don't approve of my decision.'

‘To Tommy Bloody Tucker? He thinks women are only good for making tea and cleaning offices. He wouldn't put a woman within a mile of this action.'

‘I told you, the George Bush Law of Averages. Even our much derided leader has to be right sometimes.'

‘I still think you're wrong. I'm sure our Federation Representative would agree with me.'

‘I doubt that, on this occasion. But as I'm telling you this project is still at this moment theoretical and highly confidential, you can hardly bring in the Fed. Rep., can you?' Percy, realizing he was sounding smug, tried to offer an olive branch. ‘You'll be involved in the subsequent interviewing, where your skills will be much appreciated.'

‘Except that the National Crime Squad or the Drugs Squad will take over all the really juicy interviews, as you well know.'

DS Blake was usually very clear-sighted about such matters. But on this occasion, as things would turn out, she was quite wrong.

A
t ten o'clock on Wednesday night, there was no moon. But it was a cold, clear night, with just enough light from the stars to allow the long, low outline of the big house to be seen clearly against the night sky.

Peach usually felt himself irresistibly reminded of the house in
Psycho
on such occasions; he had met a few examples of the Anthony Perkins character in his career, some of them sinister, some of them no more than odd. But this house was clearly much bigger and grander than that decrepit motel in
Psycho
. It was much more like a National Trust mansion, both in its own dimensions and in the size of its grounds.

Marton Towers had never belonged to one of the nation's great landed families. It had been built in the heyday of neo-Gothic, when Victoria was still a young queen, and when labour was cheap, materials solid, and workmanship excellent. There were turrets, castellations and even the odd minaret, all executed with the exuberance of a Britain confident of its empire. In the days when King Cotton had ruled Lancashire, one of its magnates had enjoyed pouring his profits into this demonstration of his success.

Percy moved his small team into position at 22.05. Ultimately, they were to make some important arrests, whilst the Armed Response Unit covered them and every exit with their weapons. A piece of cake, Percy had told his team, in that cliché beloved of commanders. Well, it would be, wouldn't it? If things went to plan. If the element of surprise enabled them to keep the initiative. If …

Things rarely went exactly according to plan, when the police made a raid. Indeed, you couldn't plan every detail. Especially on a battlefield as big as this one.

Percy didn't like the size of the big house, feared the way that his resources might have to be spread too thinly over too wide an area. From three hundred yards away, he could already see many lights piercing the massive outline of the mansion against the navy sky. As well as the high block of the main house, there were servants' quarters, kitchens, old stables that had been converted into garages and workshops and God knew what else.

All of these were places where men could hide. Dangerous men, in an industry like this, where there were many millions of pounds available to employ muscle and guns. DCI Peach showed nothing to his team, but he was more on edge than he could remember being for years.

Somewhere behind him, a little further down the lane, members of the Armed Response Unit were probably peering over the seven-foot-high stone wall of the estate and thinking the same things he was thinking. Percy Peach hoped they were. It never paid to underestimate your enemy, or the dangers which were going to confront you in the next half an hour.

There was a solid stone gatehouse at the entrance to the Towers. A high arch framed the wrought-iron gates which screened the tarmac drive up to the front of the house. No one entered without passing the Cerberus who guarded it. A Cerberus which took the shape of Arnie Wright, a heavy who had done time for GBH and now controlled access to the man who owned Marton Towers.

If they were to retain the element of surprise on their side, Cerberus must remain toothless. Arnie Wright must not be allowed to warn his master and the drug barons who were meeting with him at this moment in the dining room of the big house of the imminent disruption of their feast.

Three men were plenty for this task. Percy glanced sideways, caught a glint of light from the gatehouse on a face which was blacker than the moonless night above them. DC Clyde Northcott, once a drug user himself, before he was recruited, first into the police and lately into the CID, by Percy Peach himself. Six feet three of bone and muscle. A hard bastard. A good man to have at your side on a night like this.

And on Peach's other side, the paler, fresher face of Brendan Murphy, who should have been Irish but who had spent all twenty-five years of his life in Lancashire. In that moment, Percy Peach was surer than ever of his decision to exclude DS Blake from this enterprise. It was simply not a suitable assignment for her. That was what he had told himself as well as Lucy, until now. It was only here, feeling the cold solidity of the estate wall against his fingertips, that he acknowledged to himself that he could never have faced Agnes Blake, if her daughter had come to any harm here.

A second later, they were at the gatehouse, slinking like predators out of the darkness and up to the thick stone walls of this huge sentry box. Arnie Wright was lounging back on his chair by the desk, turning the pages of the
Sun
, happy that he would be undisturbed for the rest of the evening now that all the expected guests had arrived. His unconscious assumption was that no one came to this isolated place on foot, that any strangers who came to disturb him would do so in a vehicle, whose engine noise would give him due notice of their arrival.

Peach studied him for a moment through the orange square of the gatehouse window. Wright's right hand was on the edge of his newspaper. It was perhaps five feet from the warning button which would give notice to the house that someone, some alien presence, was at the gatehouse and threatening to enter the main house.

Those could be the most important five feet of the evening. Peach nodded to each of the men beside him, felt them taking the same deep breath as he took, as they approached the door.

And then they were in, shouting instructions at the broad, startled face at the desk, telling it not to move. Wright did move, of course. As Peach flung himself into that five-foot gap between him and the electronic link to the house, he leapt up from his seat with a fierce, automatic oath.

But he had no chance. Clyde Northcott was on him, the force of his attack carrying Wright back against the wall, his ebony hand on the man's throat, bending his chin and his head backwards against the cold, unyielding plaster. ‘Don't even think about it, sunshine!' he snarled into Wright's face from three inches.

And Wright's dilated eyes filled with fear as they saw the fierce determination in the dark pupils which were so close to his. He shook his head the minimal quarter of an inch which Northcott's grip allowed him, signifying that no, he wouldn't think about it, whatever ‘it' might be. A hard bastard, this. Arnie Wright had met a few of them whilst he was in Brixton. He knew when he was beaten.

Brendan Murphy cut the electronic link to the main house. Peach radioed to the uniformed men in the van a hundred yards down the lane to come and collect Wright, then gave the news of the first move in the battle to the Armed Response Unit who waited a little further away.

So far so good. The first phase was completed.

There were four nationalities among the group which sat around the big mahogany dining table in Marton Towers.

Jack Clark waited with two other men in an anteroom alongside the very grand panelled room, where Victorian industrialists had eaten huge meals and striven to achieve the transition from trade into the gentry. He could hear a low murmur of conversation from behind the huge panelled door of the dining room, but he could distinguish not a syllable of what was being said. He fancied that the conversation was in English, the new
lingua franca
of the twenty-first century, but he could not even be sure of that.

Jack wanted to hear laughter from behind that door, to hear voices raised in amusement and friendly exchange. Laughter meant that you were relaxed, and when you were relaxed you were vulnerable. He had long since ceased to wear a watch, but he knew that the strike must come soon, if it came at all. He prayed that his friends when they came would be borne into that room on an irresistible tide of surprise.

His friends. He had come to terms with that now, but it had taken him a full day to switch sides again in his mind. He had worked so hard to submerge himself into his character in the squat that he had found it difficult to drag himself out of it, to change his mindset to accommodate what was going to happen here.

If things went according to plan. His brain framed again that condition, trying for the mindset which would ensure his safety, if tonight's raid failed and he had to live for a little longer with the armies of the night.