The Blood Whisperer (33 page)

“Well, thank you very much sir,” the probationer said when the do-gooder paused for breath. Bearing in mind the next unfortunate who would have to deal with him, he added maliciously, “It’s observant members of the public like you that make our job easier. We’ll send somebody round the moment they’re available.”

After he’d hung up the young policeman scrunched the paper up and dropped it into his waste paper basket then paused. He was still new enough in the job not to have had all the enthusiasm kicked out of him just yet.

He reached for the paper, flattened it out and idly ran a quick PNC check just for practice. The result made his eyes pop and had him grabbing for the receiver again.

Kelly lay hidden in the long grass at the edge of a small copse of trees overlooking the racing stables where Harry Grogan had his horses in training.

It was mid-afternoon. She’d arrived an hour before and left the borrowed Vauxhall parked up in a lay-by, hiking in across the fields to her present vantage point.

If she closed her eyes she could still conjure the image of the man O’Neill had identified as Brian Stubbs. Sadly, she had no clear idea of how often he made any kind of visit to the stables. O’Neill had described him as Grogan’s resident vet but that didn’t mean he actually lived on the premises, although with animals this valuable she supposed anything was possible.

Waiting was a frustrating business. Kelly gave it another hour, during which time a young lad made a tour of the loose boxes, looking briefly over each door to check all was well. Occasionally he disappeared briefly inside but otherwise the horses were left undisturbed to while away the afternoon doing whatever it was that horses did.

Kelly realised she was going to have to come back tomorrow morning—preferably early—with something waterproof to lie on, and food and drink to sustain her during the wait. Some binoculars would be a good idea too she decided, shuffling backwards out of her position and scrambling to her knees in the wood.

She began to brush the loose leaves and grass from her clothing when the crackle of undergrowth froze her in place.

She turned slowly. There was a man not ten yards away. He was dressed in a similar style to the clothing Brian Stubbs had been wearing in O’Neill’s photograph but the face was younger and the expression had far more steel to it. That impression was reinforced by the battered double-barrelled shotgun he carried broken open over his arm.

“This is private property miss,” he said in an ominous tone. “You’re trespassing.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” Kelly said in her most harmless voice. “I’ll leave at once of course.”

She started forwards but the man sidestepped quickly and snapped the gun closed with a solid metallic click.

“Not as easy as that is it?” the man said. He jerked his head. “Boss wants a word. Then we’ll see.”

Kelly shrugged but her mind was racing. Despite his obvious familiarity with the shotgun she very much doubted the man was prepared to shoot her in cold blood just for a civil offence. On the other hand, being apprehended could be very bad for her. It would only take someone who’d seen a news report over the last couple of days to recognise her face . . .

She flicked a quick glance at the man’s feet, the deciding factor. He was wearing old black Wellington boots, the tops gaping around his tucked-in trousers.

Nobody could run fast in boots that loose.

Kelly darted sideways and set off like a dodging hare through the trees, keeping her head low. Surprise gave her a head start. She’d worked enough crime scenes with shotgun injuries to know that if she managed to pull out a lead of more than thirty or forty yards, the shot would be too spread and too spent to bring her down. She hoped.

The man bellowed something behind her but she didn’t catch the words. His voice sounded distant, growing more so. She risked a quick look over her shoulder just to be sure and saw him begin to falter as though giving up the chase already.

When she looked forwards again, she found out why.

A huge man blocked the path in front of her. He was wearing a suit that strained to contain his bulk, arms forced out from his sides by the slabs of muscle around his torso.

Kelly tried to stop, to change direction, felt her feet skid on the soft earth. She just had time to see the big guy swing one meaty arm—to register a fist the size of a steam iron heading for her face at an alarmingly accelerated rate—and then she ran full tilt into the waiting punch.

The sky cracked open in an astounding blaze of light and pain.

Then darkness fell, and so did she.

It took Ray McCarron a long time to answer the front door. He was half-hoping it would be Kelly standing there with that casual tilt to her hips and her hands in her pockets. That by ringing the bell instead of finessing the Yale lock again she was somehow making peace.

Instead when he fumbled the door open he found a uniformed constable waiting impatiently on his doorstep.

“Mr McCarron, is it?” the policeman asked. “Ray McCarron?”

“Yes. Why, what’s happened?”

McCarron noted the policeman’s eyes track over the obvious bruising on his face, the broken arm and the slow careful movements his injuries forced him to make. “Looks like I should be asking
you
that sir.”

“I was mugged at work a few days ago,” McCarron dismissed stonily. “There’ll be a report somewhere I’m sure.”

Any trace of humour disappeared from the policeman’s face. “Yes, well we’re looking for one of your employees—Kelly Jacks. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why sir. If she’s here you’d do well to say so now.”

McCarron kept his expression flat. Not difficult when the majority of his face was too stiff and too tender to display much emotion anyway. “Why on earth would you think she’d be here?

“That, sir.” The policeman stepped sideways and pointed. McCarron glanced over the man’s shoulder and saw at once Kelly’s old Mini parked on the other side of the road. It was surrounded by crime-scene tape and being guarded by two more uniforms while a flutter of neighbours gathered to gawk at the show.

Bloody busybodies.

And just as that thought struck, another followed along almost instantly.

Where’s my car?

“OK—got it thanks,” DC Dempsey said and dropped the phone back on its cradle. He glanced across at O’Neill. “Looks like Jacks might have lifted her boss’s car—a Vauxhall Omega estate. McCarron’s just given one of the uniforms some cock and bull story about it being at his office but it’s bloody convenient that Jacks’s car turns up outside his house and his wheels are nowhere to be seen.”

“Check it out,” O’Neill said. “We’ve also—”

“Detective Inspector O’Neill!” The voice from the doorway was loud enough to make the DC jump, the tone chopping through what O’Neill had been about to say like a chisel. Heads snapped round and froze as if hoping to avoid the baleful glare now sweeping the room.

“My office,” Chief Superintendent Quinlan ground out. “Now.”

He didn’t wait to see if the order was obeyed, just spun and stalked out. From back view his anger was all the more apparent in the bulging compression of his neck.

O’Neill rose with a sinking feeling, marshalled his expression into one of neutral unconcern and followed at a more relaxed pace.

“Good luck,” Dempsey muttered as he passed. “If you don’t come back can I have first dibs on your swivel chair?”

O’Neill forced a smile. “If I don’t come back you can probably have first dibs on my job.”

That caused a few answering grins. O’Neill held onto his until he was in the corridor and making for the stairs. Quinlan had disappeared.
Christ, how does someone his age move so fast?

O’Neill lengthened his stride. The door to Quinlan’s office was still open when he reached it. O’Neill knocked as he stepped through.

“You wanted to see me sir?”

The chief super hadn’t quite reached his chair and he completed the manoeuvre before glancing up. O’Neill forestalled his next move by coming fully into the office and closing the door behind him. He did not make the mistake of taking a seat.

Something hovered around the corner of Quinlan’s mouth. He sat upright, leaning his arms on the desk and linking his fingers together very precisely in front of his computer keyboard.

“The boys you put on former Detective Chief Inspector Allardice,” he began with surprising mildness, “still wet behind the ears were they? Still in short trousers with the mittens their mummies knitted for them on strings down their sleeves?”

“It was my understanding they’re experienced lads sir.”

“Are they really? So how is it that a man who is now a glorified bartender was able not only to spot these covert surveillance experts but photograph the pair of them inside the first day?”

It was phrased as a question and O’Neill foolishly thought he was expected to answer. “Well sir—”

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m giving you a bollocking.”

“Sorry sir,” O’Neill said.

Quinlan regarded him bleakly for a moment. To the right-hand corner of the desk was a flatscreen monitor mounted on a swivelling bracket. The chief super leaned forwards and nudged it round to face O’Neill. Two jpeg files were open on screen, both taken at a distance and not entirely sharp but the faces of the men were still clear enough. The captions “Pinky” and “Perky” had been added to them.

“The arrogant sod emailed them for my attention, courtesy of the Press Office.” Quinlan’s face twisted into a sour smile. “He’s playing with us, Vince,” he said at last. “He was infuriating enough before but now he’s bloody insufferable. And this—” he flicked his fingers towards the screen, “—this is just showing off, rubbing our noses in it.”

O’Neill gave a faint nod. “He knows we can’t touch him,” he agreed. “Or we’d have done it already.”

Quinlan regarded him bleakly for a moment. Then he rose with a sigh, turned his back on the inspector and stepped to the window. O’Neill waited for him to speak. His mind inevitably slid to Kelly Jacks. Had she stolen Ray McCarron’s car or had he willingly given her access?

He didn’t need to ask why. After all, he’d shown her the picture of Brian Stubbs, told her Stubbs had easy access to the drug that had been found in her system and pointed her in the right direction. After that it didn’t take a detective to work out where she was most likely headed.

Still, no reports of any bodies yet.

“I’ve always hated this view,” Quinlan said out of nowhere, catching O’Neill unawares. “I won’t be sorry to leave this office behind.”

That rocked O’Neill. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have in here sir.”

Quinlan glanced back at him. “Better the devil you know, hmm?”

O’Neill allowed the barest hint of a smile to lurk around his mouth. “Something like that sir, yes.”

“I’ve been trying not to slacken off and watch the clock tick down to the inevitable ‘surprise’ retirement party and the gold clock,” he said, “but the closer it gets the more on tenterhooks I find myself. I don’t kid myself that I’ll go out in a blaze of glory but I’ve no desire to go out in a shower of shit either.”

“Sir?”

“That’s exactly what Frank Allardice could dump on us if we don’t handle this very carefully indeed, Vince. As you so rightly say—he knows where the bodies are buried,” Quinlan said. “Frank put a lot of people away who thoroughly deserved to be locked up,” he went on, “but sometimes his methods left something to be desired—as I’m sure you know better than most.”

“I was his DC for a while when I came up out of uniform sir, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well then you’ll know that Allardice was a great believer in the so-called Ways & Means Act—if he didn’t get them for something they actually did, he’d get them for something they might have done instead. Net result was the same.”

“Given the way half the little toerags bleat on about being under arrest as a ‘violation of their human rights’ sir, there are some of us who’d still agree with that today.”

“And to hell with the law, Vince?”

O’Neill coloured at the dry tone. “We have to be given some room to manoeuvre sir, or you may as well do away with all the real coppers and employ a bunch of trained chimpanzees.”

Quinlan gave a snort and ducked his head towards the two images on the flatscreen. “Sometimes I think we already do that.”

“I warned them he was canny.” O’Neill paused, chose his words carefully. “In some ways I can’t help hoping I was right.”

“Oh?”

“Well if it comes out that Frank Allardice is mixed up in anything dodgy we’ll have a wave of miscarriage of justice claims to contend with.” He wondered if he’d gone too far but Quinlan was way ahead of him.

“And if it all comes out just as I’m leaving then nobody will believe my retirement is voluntary.” He returned to the desk, slumped into his seat and leaned back a little. “You certainly know how to put a blight on a man’s day, Vince.”

“Sorry sir,” O’Neill said cheerfully. “Do you want me to recall Pinky and Perky—put some fresh faces onto him?”

“No, you may as well leave them in place. A visible deterrent might encourage him to keep his nose clean while he’s over here I suppose, although I’m not holding my breath on that one.”

O’Neill nodded, was about to turn away when he felt compelled to ask, “What about Kelly Jacks sir?”

Quinlan’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “What about her?”

“Do you think she was a victim of the Ways & Means Act too?”

The sudden stillness told O’Neill he
had
overstepped the mark. “Certainly not,” Quinlan said. “I was there, don’t forget. I remember how she was found—the state she was in. That’s one conviction I’d stand by with no qualms at all.”

O’Neill nodded. “Good to know,” he said.

Kelly came round to the smell of the sawmill and the violent clatter of iron on wood.