Closer Than Blood Read online

  “So,” Jimmy continued. “What actually happened?”

  I glanced at the still form of the man I’d knocked out as he was carted off on an ambulance gurney. He was still unconscious, but as a precaution they had handcuffed him to the metal arms of the trolley and had three officers with him, two of them armed with tasers. “I had a bad day.”

  “No shit. I could do with some details though. Come on, I’ll give you a lift back to the nick to write your statement and you can tell me on the way. They’ve got it in hand here.”

  And so, as we drove back into the city, I relayed the entire day’s events to my old friend, leaving nothing out. If there was one person in the world aside from my dad that I could trust with anything, it was Jimmy. His stabbing was the reason I went off the rails all those years ago, that and his subsequent kidnapping by the same people. I got the impression that he felt he still owed me somehow.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked as we pulled into the back yard of John Street Police Station.

  “Nothing stupid. I reckon my best bet is to go and write a bloody good statement, then go home and get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”

  I was about to open my door and clamber out when Jimmy’s radio blasted, a flat, ugly sound that meant an officer was in distress. Half a second later, a panicked voice began screaming over the airwaves.

  “1020, 1020, urgent assistance! They’re attacking the ambulance!”

  Jimmy and I stared at each other in shock as the controller’s voice came over the radio, her tone calm but words fast.

  “CC106, message received. What’s your location? Units are coming, but we need to know where you are.”

  “I don’t know, we’re in the back of the ambulance. Near the hosp … Oh shit, they’ve got guns!”

  The transmission cut off abruptly with a pained grunt. Jimmy spun the car, flicked the lights on and shot out of the car park as the back doors to the police station began to disgorge a steady stream of officers running towards any available vehicle.

  We came out of the car park so fast we almost took off, Jimmy hunched over the wheel as we screamed up the steep incline of Carlton Hill towards the hospital.

  The radio began flooding with messages as units assigned themselves, until Jimmy found a break in the calls and sent his own message.

  “All call signs, this is Charlie Golf nine-nine. No divisional units are to make an approach until Hotel Foxtrot have cleared the scene. Locate the ambulance, but do not approach. Confirm last received.”

  I looked over at Jimmy approvingly as the controller picked up his message and repeated it. He’d not been an inspector long, but already he was thinking strategically, even when involved in something himself. Most officers, myself included, would likely have thought of nothing more than finding their endangered colleagues.

  “Control, this is CC109,” an excited voice called up. “I have sight of the ambulance on Wilsons Avenue. Doors are shut and no sign of any hostiles. Permission to approach?”

  “Negative,” Jimmy called up before anyone else could speak. “I have a short ETA, keep any public back and stand by.”

  True to his word we were there in less than two minutes, fighting through the traffic that was building up in both directions. Wilsons Avenue was on the very outskirts of Brighton, with houses on one side and fields on the other, but it was a major road. Jimmy ended up driving onto the pavement to get us past, lights and sirens still going until we reached CC109.

  As we leapt out I could see the ambulance, the driver’s wing dented where it had been rammed half off the road. The front doors both open, no sign of the paramedics. I convinced myself that was good news.

  Two officers, a man and a woman both in their early twenties, hurried over to us as we approached.

  “Orders, Guv?” The woman asked, glancing up and down the street. Her fingers drummed against the taser she carried strapped to her vest.

  Jimmy looked around, then at me. “What do you reckon, Gareth?”

  “No sign of anyone else, and they’d be idiots to hide in the ambulance. I say we go see if our colleagues are OK.”

  He nodded. “Agreed. Amanda, right?”

  The woman nodded. “Sir.”

  “We’ll approach, you cover us. Anyone does anything out of the ordinary and you pop them.”

  She nodded again and drew her taser, following us with her colleague.

  We hurried towards the ambulance, watched now by dozens of people who had exited their cars, many of whom had phones out to video our approach.

  We paused by the back doors, Jimmy and I taking a handle each as he mouthed a countdown. For the third time that day, adrenaline began to flood my system, making my heart pound. When he reached ‘go’, we pulled the handles and stepped to the sides, allowing Amanda a clear look into the back.

  “Fuck,” she breathed. “Are they dead?”

  Inside, the three police officers and two paramedics who had been accompanying my bear of an assailant to hospital lay on the floor, the yellow metal awash with blood. The gurney the prisoner had been strapped to was empty, the cuffs that had been holding him neatly cut through with some kind of power tool.

  Leaping into the back, I leaned down and began checking pulses.

  “They’re alive,” I said with relief, although I wasn’t sure how bad their injuries were. Each of them had nasty wounds to the face or temple, and from the shape of the injuries I guessed that they’d been pistol-whipped into unconsciousness. “Get another ambulance rolling, now.”

  The radio crackled to life as Jimmy climbed into the back with me.

  “Looks like your shooters came back for their friend,” his voice was almost drowned out by the wail of multiple sirens as other units began to arrive. “Who the hell are these guys?”

  “I wish I knew,” I said grimly, “but the only person who does is in the wind and after seeing this, I reckon that if he’s sensible he’ll be hiding so deep that we’ll never find him.”

  Chapter 9

  Things moved quickly after we found the ambulance. A little over an hour later I’d found myself in the divisional commander’s briefing room on the second floor of the nick, with Jimmy and an older man in a rumpled suit with a tired face but eyes that missed nothing. He introduced himself as DCI Tomlinson from Major Crimes, but refrained from saying anything further as we waited for the Chief Superintendent to arrive.

  Despite my long years of service, I still wasn’t particularly comfortable around the top brass. In my experience, they either had unrealistic expectations or preconceived notions that couldn’t be changed, and neither was good news for someone as low down the food chain as me.

  Our new Chief Super was supposedly of a different breed and although I’d only met her once, I’d found her surprisingly pleasant. She had a habit of really listening to whoever she was talking to which, while that didn’t dispel my nervousness altogether, made me think I wasn’t about to be put through the wringer too badly for my inadvertent part in the day’s proceedings.

  After a few minutes of waiting in strained silence, Chief Superintendent Claire Striker walked into the room, dressed in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved top that looked strange when you were used to seeing her in a pristine uniform.

  “Gentlemen,” she said without preamble. “Tell me what the bloody hell is happening in my city. I have two officers with concussion and one with a fractured skull. Armed men racing around causing havoc. I have a conference call with Force Gold and the ACC in fifteen minutes, and I want to know everything before I talk to them. Sergeant Bell, you start.”

  I was a little more sparing with the details this time, leaving out the personal parts that I’d shared with Jimmy. The Chief Super wanted cold, hard facts about the case, not my personal musings, and so I kept it professional and dispassionate.

  Jimmy took over when I finished, detailing which units were assigned and where, and what initial actions were being taken. The DCI remained silent but took copious notes
while we spoke.

  When Jimmy was done, Striker nodded her thanks to us both.

  “Well done gents, sounds like you’ve made the best out of a bad situation. Sergeant Bell, do you have any idea at all where your brother might be? We tracked the lo-jack in your car, and it was abandoned on the outskirts of Hove about half an hour after he left your house.”

  I shook my head. “I wish. He’s been gone so long I doubt he knows anyone here now.”

  “Well we need to find him. Not only do I want to prevent his murder, I want to stop the people looking for him hurting anyone else. The best way to do that is to bring him, and the drugs he stole, in.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “So, as you’re uniquely placed to find him, being both his brother and an intelligence officer, I want you to drop everything else and concentrate on this. I don’t care if you have to use every favour and blow out every source you have, I want your brother behind bars before someone else gets hurt. You report directly to me, and if anyone gives you any stick, send them my way.”

  “Understood ma’am.”

  “Tommo,” she said, turning to the DCI. “Find out who the men looking for him are. We’ve got statements being taken from witnesses to the attack on the ambulance, which should give us a car make and model. From there we can check ANPR cameras in the area and get a hit. Start with that and work outwards. I want this in the bag before the national press start calling, and believe me they will.”

  “Ma’am,” he replied.

  “That’s all, thank you. I have enough to pass up the chain for now.”

  She stood and left, as did the DCI, leaving Jimmy and I looking at each other in silence.

  “Well,” he said finally. “That’s my nice peaceful late shift fucked.”

  “My heart bleeds.”

  “Thanks. Smoke?”

  I nodded and followed him out, then down the stairs to the smoking area, tucked away around the corner near the car park. The night air was cool enough to make me shiver, and it was late enough that I cracked a huge yawn before lighting my cigarette.

  “Didn’t you quit?” Jimmy asked as he lit his own.

  “Yeah, Sally hated the smell. And the taste.”

  “You seen her recently?” Jimmy had been my partner when my now ex-wife, Sally, had been our analyst in DIU. We’d been married for four wonderful years and then two terrible ones, finally separating and then getting divorced when we found we couldn’t even talk to each other without rowing. I still loved her, and I like to think she did me, but there was simply something missing from our relationship. If we’d worked out what it was, I had no doubt we would still be together, but instead she had moved divisions and now worked and lived in Hastings. I saw her name on the occasional report, but that was as close as we ever came.

  “Christ no, and I’ve got enough past-life issues at the moment, thanks very much. Speaking of which, how in hell am I going to find Jake? It’s all well and good the Chief Super telling me to use my sources, but if he’s smart enough to stay out of sight it’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “From what you said, he still needs to sell the drugs, right? That means he’s got to stick his head out at some point, and probably sooner rather than later. Can you use that somehow?” Jimmy finished his cigarette and stubbed the butt out in a nearby sand bucket. “Look, I need to go, got a division to run, but if you want me you know where I am.”

  I shook his hand and stole another cigarette before he left, lighting it from the glowing embers of the first as I mulled over what Jimmy had said. He was right, Jake needed to sell the drugs to raise money for his escape, and so he would need a buyer. With Simmonds out of the picture, that meant him asking around until an opportunity presented itself. Unless, that is, I could manufacture an opportunity that was too good for him to pass up. And it just so happened that I knew the very man to make that opportunity appear.

  Chapter 10

  Three hours of sleep and an hour of frantic planning later, I was banging on the door of a flat in the corner of Clarence Square, just south of the main shopping area in Brighton. The white-painted Georgian houses here were all split into flats, some little more than two or three rooms as landlords sought to capitalise on the superb location. Although I could hear the crowds and buses on nearby Western Road, hardly anyone was in the square itself.

  After several minutes of knocking, the door was finally opened by a man in his late twenties, with short dark hair and a frame that was only just starting to pack muscle back on after years of drug abuse.

  “Gareth,” he said, glancing around the Square with hard eyes. “Unexpected pleasure.”

  His tone implied it was anything but.

  “Hi Coop. Sorry to bother you, mate, but we need to talk.”

  He swung the door wide and let me in, giving the street a final look before shutting it and leading me down the short hallway into his flat. It was tidier than I remembered, all traces of the mould that had been eating away at the walls gone, and instead of smelling like an old sock it just smelled of cigarettes and air freshener.

  “Coffee?” Coop asked, gesturing me towards the lone sofa.

  “Yeah, sure.” I watched as he walked into the kitchen, more self-assured and confident by far than when I’d seen him last. John Cooper was an enigma, a man who had managed to straddle the line between drug user and copper for years before the badge finally beat the needle and he came back to the fold, albeit in secret.

  He was now attached, loosely, to the force surveillance unit, but only known about by people under the rank of Chief Inspector as anything other than a code name. I was one of the very few below that rank who knew who he was and what he did, and that was only because I’d been involved in getting him onboard. I also liked him, despite his rough edges. He reminded me of my younger self in a lot of ways, not least of which was his impetuous nature and willingness to get stuck in to put things right, no matter the cost.

  Coop came back in with two coffees, passing me one and then moving to lean against the wall as he sipped his.

  “What can I do for you, Gareth?” He watched me over the rim of his mug, his expression almost feral. He still carried the scars from his time in Brighton’s murky underworld, but then I guessed he always would. Besides, that very quality was what made him so effective; no one would ever guess he was a copper.

  “I need your help.”

  “I figured. What with?”

  “I need you to put out word that you have a hankering to buy some coke.”

  “Coke? Not really my thing. How much are we talking?”

  “At least two kilos, more if someone has it.”

  Coop whistled. “That’s a lot of gear.”

  “It is, but we’re looking for a specific seller.”

  He sat on the sofa, pulled out a cigarette and lit it without offering me one. “I think you’d better tell me the whole story.”

  I did, but quickly, a little tired of repeating it by now.

  “So,” I summarised, “I need to draw him to us when he pops his head up to sell the coke.”

  Coop nodded thoughtfully. “How risky is it?”

  “Honestly? Pretty high risk. I don’t know who these guys are but they don’t mess about. If you see them, I’d turn the other way and run.”

  “OK. Is this on the books or off?”

  “On,” I said, “I don’t go off the rails nowadays.”

  “Fine. I’ll make some calls, let the right people know I’m interested. That kind of weight is too much for them, so they’ll start asking around to get a cut of the action when they find a seller. If your brother is in the market, I guarantee our paths will cross soon enough.”

  “Thank you, John. Can I do anything to help?”

  “Yeah, you can bugger off and leave me to do my job. You know I don’t like people coming to the flat, especially people who are so well known. Next time, just call, yeah?”

  “Sure.” I stood and shook his ha
nd. “Thanks again.”

  “Yeah.”

  I left, moving quickly so that I wouldn’t be spotted near Coop’s flat. He had a point. Every visit to his home was a risk but what I was asking needed to be done face to face.

  I walked up to Western Road, enveloping myself in the comfortable anonymity of the early morning rush. The streets thronged with buses and taxis as I walked by just-opening shops and down through Churchill Square and then North Street towards the nick.

  The day promised to be hot, the sun already warm enough that I slung my jacket over one arm. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying like lost souls in search of absolution.

  In the light of day, the events of the night before seemed unreal, like something out of a John Woo movie instead of something that had actually happened in sleepy Woodingdean. Brighton and its surrounds had stabbings and drug deals galore, but armed men charging around taking pot-shots at people? Not so much.

  I felt the familiar excited tingle begin to build as I tried to work out who these men might be. I’ve always loved a puzzle, loved piecing together the small pieces of intel that passed through DIU, sticking them together with hunches and guesswork until you had enough of the picture to work it out. It was what I was made for, and I picked up the pace as I headed towards work, keen to get in and start poking the ants’ nest that was the Brighton underworld to see what might spill out.

  Chapter 11

  The office was a hive of activity, officers and analysts in casual clothes chatting over tatty brown desk-dividers as they worked.

  DIU was at the back of the police station on the first floor. One set of windows overlooked the roof of the courthouse and the sea beyond, the other a car park where police vehicles sat waiting, sunlight glinting off reflective markings and silver bodywork.

  The buzz of conversation dipped slightly as I walked in, people looking at me expectantly. Perhaps, I thought wryly, wondering if I was about to go off the rails again and drag them all down with me.