Nick Oldham - A Time For Justice

The cover was metal with a sliding opener. He looked at it carefully and saw that there were recent marks in the screws which held it to the wall.

‘ Don’t suppose you’ve got a screwdriver?’

Her reply was a wilting look.

Tut-tutting, he opened the kitchen drawer and rummaged through the meagre collection of utensils for something suitable to remove screws. All he could find was a flimsy table knife which twisted and buckled when he put it to use.

After much patience he managed to remove three screws from the ventilation cover, which then swung free on the remaining screw, revealing a square hole in the wall about eight by six inches.

Karen dragged a wooden kitchen stool across for him. He stood precariously on it and put his arm all the way into the ventilation cavity. He immediately found something. He gave a cry of victory and carefully, so that he would not drop it, extracted what he’d found.

‘ How did you know where to look?’ asked Karen, impressed.

‘ Cheated,’ he confessed. ‘Did the place a few years ago for dope and found this hidey-hole then. There’s a sort of lip a couple of feet down where she stored her stuff. Very tricky and pretty secure. I couldn’t quite remember how far down the lip was.’

What he’d pulled out was a brown A4-sized envelope. He opened it and shook out the contents on the cupboard top.

‘ Jane’s nest-egg,’ he said sadly. ‘Her passport to the better life.’

There were three bundles of Bank of England notes totalling about?2,000. What was more interesting was the wad of dollar traveller’s cheques, a driving licence and six credit cards.

Henry handled them carefully. ‘Voila,’ he said. ‘Recognise the name on the driving licence?’

‘ Yeah,’ said Karen sheepishly. ‘It’s that poor guy I locked up after raiding his house with the support unit.’

‘ The innocent man, you mean?’ said Henry wickedly.

‘ Don’t rub it in. It’s the driving licence Hinksman used to hire cars with. Don’t recognise the names on the credit cards.’

‘ No, I don’t either. Hinksman probably has plenty of identities, but he’s used his own name on the traveller’s cheques.’

‘ So she stole all this from Hinksman?’

Henry nodded and sat down on the settee. ‘What we’ve got here is this: a dangerous man on the loose who will not tolerate anyone getting the better of him. Jane got the better of him by stealing from him — so he murdered her; I got the better of him by arresting him, and shooting him, and he’s tried to murder me. The question I ask is this: has he finished yet? Has he made his point?’

Karen slumped down heavily next to him. ‘I’d like to say yes.’

‘ But we know what the real answer is, don’t we?’ Henry said grimly. The terror was creeping up on him again.

‘ I’ll say this for you, Joe, you’re one hell of a cool son of a bitch.’

It was Ritter talking. He was sat next to Kovaks in the back seat of the Bucar. Ram Chander was in the front passenger seat; one of Corelli’s men was driving. Behind them was another car in which Damian was being transported. They were heading south towards Miami.

‘ This must be a pretty big shock for you, after all.’

Kovaks gave Ritter a contemptuous sidelong glance, then gazed back out of the window. He’d decided that to lose his temper would lose his life. Inside though, he seethed with anger and sadness. After a pause he said, ‘How long you been working for him?’

‘ Long enough,’ admitted Ritter. ‘Long enough to have a healthy bank balance and a bolt-hole in the Caribbean.’

‘ Lucky ole you… and you, Ram? How about you?’

Ram twisted round and dangled his right hand across the seat-top. He was holding a gun which jerked dangerously around as he talked. Kovaks thought bleakly about the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction. ‘A long, long time, Mr Joe,’ he said.

Kovaks shook his head. ‘Sad… fucking sad. So, Eamon, why kill Sue?’

Ritter’s mouth twisted down at the corners. ‘Simple — she was on to me. I had to do it.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, I really enjoyed sticking my knife up her cunt.’

‘ Sick bastard.’

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Ritter crashed his gun into the side of Kovaks’ head.

‘ Aaah!’ It felt like his brain had come loose from its fittings.

‘ Never ever call me that,’ said Ritter angrily.

‘ She wasn’t onto you,’ Kovaks mumbled. ‘You were paranoid.’

‘ Crap,’ said Ritter, dismissing the statement. Suddenly he became buoyant. ‘Hey, that Lisa Want! What a fuck, man! She gives head ree-al good… But you already know that, don’t you?’I

‘ Right, so you’ve been feeding her stuff too,’ Kovaks grumbled through the palms of his hands.

‘ Couldn’t resist, man. Just could not resist. She needed an inside source, so she got me. A fuck for information. Fair trade, I’d say.’ He laughed heartily.

‘ You have very high morals,’ said Kovaks. His mind rattled: so that was how Ms Want was always up to the minute with Bureau news and information. Wow — she was really scraping the barrel with Eamon Ritter.

‘ I even fed her all that stuff about Karl Donaldson and his English buddy screwing those policewomen. Y’know, that sex-crazed FBI Agent shit?’

For a moment Kovaks wondered what he was talking about. Then he remembered. And recalled how Ritter had joined the two agents for a drink one night soon after Karl had returned from England a few months before. No doubt killing two birds with one stone: picking up information for Corelli as well as titbits for Lisa.

He looked at Ram, then Ritter. ‘So what’s next?’

‘ Sit back and enjoy the ride,’ Ram suggested.

‘ It’s the last one you’ll be takin’,’ laughed Ritter.

Ram looked quickly at Ritter — his expression puzzled Kovaks, for it seemed to have a significant meaning — then turned to face the front.

Kovaks settled down and began to figure out how he was going to get out of this… if he was going to get out of this.

At the same time as Henry and Karen had entered the bedsit, the national and international news had just finished on BBC1. A couple of minutes of local news followed; the lead story concerned the death of John Abbot in a police pursuit. The item showed a clip of FB being interviewed about the incident, recorded earlier on the steps of Blackpool Central police station. FB was fairly vague about everything, though he did state that Abbot had been driving a stolen Metro which actually belonged to a police officer. FB offered no explanations as to the cause of the explosion. ‘We’re keeping an open mind at the moment,’ he said. ‘We don’t really know anything for sure until tomorrow.’

The reporter pressed him for details of why the Bomb Squad were looking at the car.

‘ Just routine,’ he said patronisingly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me… ‘He walked out of shot, revealing the officer who was standing directly behind him: Henry Christie, looking rather ill.

Hinksman, sprawled in a chair in the safe house in Blackburn, sat bolt upright. Up to the point where Henry appeared on screen he hadn’t really been taking too much notice.

‘ Motherfucker. You’re still alive then.’

He threw himself back into his chair in frustration, clenching and unclenching his fists angrily. Finally, however, he couldn’t help but laugh.

‘ You’re a lucky son of a bitch, Sergeant Christie,’ he said to the ceiling. ‘But I ain’t finished with you yet.’

There was a knock at the front door. For a second, Hinksman froze. He checked through the curtains before answering and letting Lenny Dakin in.