D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

‘Bollocks!’ he said. ‘I’m not taking that crap!’

‘You haven’t got a choice.’

‘Who says so?’

‘I say so! Let’s face it, Stafford, you’re an old warhorse that’s past its prime and ready to be put out to pasture. Let the thing go before you do anything foolish.’ He looked down to his papers. ‘You’re off the case. I’ve put Morley onto it to wrap it up.’

‘That wanker? I don’t believe it. You can’t do this.’

‘You’re speaking about a fellow officer, I have to remind you! And you’d better believe it, because I just did. Conversation over, Stafford. We’ll sort things out later.’

‘I have to protest…’

‘I don’t have to hear you.’

Stafford stormed out of the office. He saw Style standing with a number of other colleagues. They all looked at him like he was a broken piece of glass, the edge flying their way. They knew him well enough to be able to read his temper like a weatherman predicts a hurricane.

‘You know about this?’ he fired shotgun-like at the group of officers. One or two looked away. ‘Styles, you in on this too?’

‘Sorry, sir, in on what?’

‘They’ve pulled in Pawlowski and slapped a murder charge on him. Full confession, apparently.’ He could tell by the vacant expression that he appeared as much in the dark as anyone. ‘OK, so where the fuck is he?’ he blasted. The men remained tight-lipped. He was told Holding Room 3. Stafford let the men wither under one of his trademark glowers then dashed away, swirling through the office like a grey tornado. Styles followed quickly on his heels.

‘When?’ he asked, trying to keep up with him.

‘This morning. They got a tip-off. Conveniently forgot to tell me. He’s put Morley on the case to wrap it up.’

‘He can’t do that.’

‘He just did.’

Stafford bounded down the corridors, pile-driving through doors, muttering under his breath, getting more worked up along the way.

‘Let me in the fucking room!’ Stafford badgered the reluctant duty officer, who resisted bravely but eventually unlocked the door and stood aside. A man was sat on a chair, his head down. He lifted it on hearing the door open. His left eye was swollen, a cheek bruised, lip split. ‘A full confession…’ Stafford said.

‘He resisted arrest,’ said the officer. ‘Put up a fight. Broke an officer’s nose.’

‘Bollocks!’ said Stafford with a contemptible snort down his nose. ‘He resisted making a confession, more like.’

‘Jesus!’ said Styles.

‘You OK?’ Stafford asked of the man. His reply was to spit on the ground at Stafford’s feet.

‘This isn’t the 1970s,’ Styles mouthed incredulously. ‘They can’t do this and get away with it. Not unless they had good cause to believe he is the murderer.’

‘And my name’s Andy Pandy!’ he said.

‘Andy who, sir? Wait a minute, where are you going?’

‘To get pissed’ he retorted.

Styles found the man sat outside in his car in the car park, his forehead resting on a bridge made up of his fingers, Bon Jovi blasting out of the stereo. He knocked on the glass of the door. Stafford, without looking up, hit the button and the window crawled down.

‘What?’ she said.

‘You never drink on duty. Never have, never will.’

‘Bollocks!’ he said. ‘What do you know?’

‘The men back there know you better than they know their own wives. They respect you, cantankerous old sod that you are. Not my words, theirs. They said you’d be in the car park listening to Bon Jovi on full blast.’

‘Get in,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

He drove for a good five minutes before saying anything. ‘Something is going on here, Styles. Something I can’t get my head round. Never seen anything like it all the time I’ve been on the force. So, tell me straight: what’s going on?’

‘Beats me.’

‘Cut the crap. Let’s start with you.’

‘Me?’ said Styles. ‘I don’t get it. What do you mean?’

‘Do you think I’m going senile too? I’ve been in this business far too long to have the wool pulled over my eyes. You get transferred to my unit out of the blue from the Met. No real reason given. I say I don’t want you, Maloney tells me I’ve got to have you. Crucial to the case, he says. Still don’t need you, I say. Don’t argue, I’m told.’

Styles’ fingers drummed on his thigh and he watched the world shoot by in a blur. ‘It’s only forty miles an hour speed limit here, sir,’ he observed.

‘So I take you,’ he resumed, pressing his foot harder on the accelerator. ‘And I soon sniff out that this isn’t your usual beat. Little things stand out, irritating little things that get me wondering. I even get one of my men coming up to me to say something similar. So, I says to myself, who is it exactly that I have here? Why is he here? Well I still have contacts in the Met so I did a little digging. Got a few people to pass on what they knew.’

‘Which, of course, is strictly illegal’ he said. ‘So what did they know?’

‘Surprise, surprise, what do I find? You never really came from the Met, did you? OK, Styles, spill the beans once and for all, who are you, where are you from, and what the fuck is going on here?’

‘Maybe you’d best pull over,’ he said. ‘You’re going to kill someone if you don’t cool down.’

‘Too fucking right I am!’ he thundered, then sighed, indicated and pulled over to the side of the road. Someone honked belligerently behind him and he threw up a middle finger. ‘Right, start talking, because there’s some weird shit going down here that I’m not party to.’ He killed the engine, sat back and folded his arms.

Styles closed his eyes briefly, sucked in a calming breath. ‘You’re right; I’m not with the Met. I’m with Special Operations; Counter Terrorism Command.’

‘SO15? Bollocks!’ scoffed Stafford.

‘Straight up,’ said Styles. He reached into his pocket, whipped out ID which he handed to Stafford, who read it, shaking his head.

‘What the fuck has this case got to do with you guys?’ He thought about it. ‘Maloney’s obviously in on this. I see lots of things starting to fall into place. Right, Nobby, tell me the rest.’

‘I’d have to kill you if I did,’ he said lightly.

‘I’ll kill you if you don’t, you little tosser. The fact nobody tells me any of this really fucks me off!’

‘Understandable,’ Styles agreed with a nod. ‘But all done for good reason.’

‘And the good reason being?’

‘We got wind of a major terrorist threat to mainland UK about a year ago. That threat level has since been raised to substantial.’

‘An attack is a strong possibility…’ said Stafford.

‘In the jargon, yes.’

‘A threat from whom, from where?’

‘MI6 have been receiving reports of a group, going under the guise of the Church of Everlasting Bliss. Doradus appears to be the name of its spiritual leader.’

‘The same Doradus that Carl Wood was fearful of?’

‘The very same.’

‘So you think they murdered him? Why?’

‘What the doctor who pronounced Wood dead from a heart attack didn’t notice was the additional injection puncture wound. Didn’t notice because the man had Type 1 diabetes who injected insulin daily. Wood had quite simply been injected with a dose of a chemical that was most likely digithiamine dianthisyde that stopped his heart. A substance very effective and almost impossible to detect. It’s a favourite of theirs. Yes, most definitely he was murdered.’

‘Let me guess, because he obviously knew too much about them and they didn’t want it broadcasting. You reckon they silenced him because they knew he made contact with us, had arranged a meeting?’ Styles nodded emphatically. ‘How’d they know about the meeting?’