Jack Slater - No Place to Hide

Pete nodded. An isolated, lonely life, broken by sitting alone among the crowds on the High Street once a fortnight. Christ, talk about sad.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out, checked the screen and saw the ID flashing up: Doc . ‘Sorry,’ he said to Michaels. ‘I need to take this.’ He hit the button and raised the phone to his ear. ‘Hello, Doc. What’s up?’

‘I’ve just heard back from the lab,’ Chambers said. ‘We have the toxicology from Jeremy Tyler. I was right, unfortunately. He had been dosed. With succinylcholine, so he was paralysed but fully aware as the fire took hold around him.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘So, what did she have to say while you were on your own with her?’ Pete asked as he pulled away from the kerb outside the Michaels’ house.

The sun was low in the sky, hidden behind a mass of heavy black cloud, leaving it near-dark although it was still mid-afternoon. Pete switched his lights on. The beams swept across other parked cars, pavements fronted by stretches of mown grass and low, neat walls protecting tidy gardens in front of suburban houses where situations like this were not meant to arise.

‘She loved her son, boss. Wouldn’t have a word said against him, even hypothetically. My guess – she was the reason he was so withdrawn. Overprotective, you know? Smothering. But essentially, he kept himself to himself. Had interests that most guys grow out of at about twelve. Trains, planes – stuff like that. The only vaguely social thing he seemed to be involved in was the annual model train exhibition at the local school. Has quite a big following, apparently. Draws people in from all over. As far as the West Midlands. And she was right. There was no porn on his computer, or any sign of it in the history log.’

He drove past the school she had just mentioned – the school his own daughter, Annie, attended. The one Tommy had gone to as well until just over a year ago when he switched to the local senior school. Cars lined both sides of the road outside, parents sitting patiently waiting for their offspring to emerge. The bright railings and heavy metal gates made it look like some kind of junior prison. His mind conjured an image of ten-year-old Annie, sitting at her desk, sucking on the end of her pen as she avidly watched the teacher at the front of the class, absorbing every speck of information they could provide.

In a few minutes, the scene would change completely, the ring of a bell releasing a dark tide of noisy humanity onto the quiet streets like a swarm of angry bees.

‘How’s she doing, boss? Annie? She all right?’

Pete blinked. ‘Yes, she’s great. Don’t know what I’d have done without her, the past few months, to be honest.’

‘And Louise?’

Pete glanced across. Saw the genuine concern in her expression. Jane was more than a junior officer. She was a friend. They had been partners for three years before he got the sergeant’s exam. He trusted her like no one else on the force – even their DI, Colin Underhill, who had been both a boss and a mentor through their early years in CID. ‘She’s . . . She seems to have turned a corner. The fact that Tommy was there with Rosie, that he’s still alive . . . It’s given her something to focus on. Some sort of hope. I wouldn’t want to be Simon Phillips if she ran into him, but…’

Jane laughed. ‘Not impressed, eh?’

‘Not really. It’s been almost seven months and the only real evidence he’s got is what we gave him last week, from the Rosie Whitlock case. She’s bad enough with me. Why could I bring Rosie back and not Tommy? Where is he? Why won’t he come home? What are we doing to find him? Not that I can blame her. I just wish I had the answers for her. But, if she got hold of Simon, she’d have his balls for earrings.’ He glanced in the mirror, but the school was gone from sight around a bend in the road.

*

Dave stared up at the castle-like gatehouse of the dark-brick Victorian prison with its huge arch-topped doors of incongruously bright blue.

‘Bugger, that took a can or two of paint, didn’t it?’

‘Just don’t say anything about cheap labour.’ Pete knocked on the man-sized door cut into the big gates.

‘Would I?’

The team had drawn a blank on their search for a source for the suxamethonium and on Tyler’s internet history, so Pete had sought Silverstone’s permission to talk to other people’s arrestees and brought Dave along to lighten the load and speed the job up while the rest of the team continued to search for other clues.

The door in front of them opened and a black-uniformed prison guard asked, ‘Sergeant Gayle?’

Pete nodded and flashed his badge. ‘And DC Miles.’

Dave showed his own ID.

‘Come in, gents.’ He stood back.

‘Yes, you would,’ Pete said to Dave as they stepped through. ‘But if you do, I won’t try to stop them keeping you.’

The door behind them banged shut and a bolt shot across, then another. Despite himself, Pete shivered.

‘This way, gents.’ The guard stepped past them and led them across the wide, blue-brick yard.

They signed in at the reception desk in the main block and Pete was led to an interview room more usually used by inmates and their solicitors.

A table stood in the middle of the room – more of a cell but without the fittings – with a plastic chair at either side of it. In one of them sat the lean, scraggy-looking figure of one of the men who had been arrested in the major anti-drug operation that had brought Pete back to active service two weeks ago. His hands were manacled to a steel ring in the middle of the table, which was bolted to the floor.

‘Afternoon, Stevie. How’s it going?’

‘How do you think?’ Lockwood’s lank blond hair had been cut short, but his attitude hadn’t changed and he still managed to look scruffy, even in prison uniform.

‘Well, it’s not like it’s your first visit here, is it? Should be used to it by now. Anyway, I thought I’d come and brighten your day a bit.’

‘How’s that?’

Pete sat down opposite the drug dealer. ‘Might be able to put in a good word, get a bit shaved off your sentence if you can help me out with something.’

‘I don’t want to get a rep as a bloody snitch, mate. Not while I’m in here.’

Pete shook his head. ‘Where’s your public spirit, eh? I’m not even asking you to snitch on anyone. I just want a bit of info, that’s all. About where I might come upon a certain substance, if I was inclined to.’

Lockwood gave a snort of laughter. ‘What, you getting desperate? I hear you’ve had it a bit rough, lately.’

‘I don’t need drugs when I’ve got the likes of you I can go out and use as punchbags, Stevie. Marvellous release for frustration, that is. But, just for now, I need to know if there’s somewhere in the city a person might get their hands on some sux.’

Lockwood’s eyes widened as he sat back abruptly in his chair. ‘What? I ain’t into weird stuff like that.’

Pete sat forward in his chair. ‘But you probably know who is. Am I right?’

Lockwood frowned. ‘Why would I? I don’t use the stuff and I don’t deal in it.’

‘Like-minded people know about each other, though. It’s a fact of life. Doesn’t matter if you’re into drugs, kiddie porn or model railways, you get to know who else is. The club mentality.’

‘Well, I ain’t the club type. I’m strictly a loner, me.’

‘Oh, well.’ Pete shrugged. ‘You can’t help me, I can’t help you. But the fact that I’ve been here, talking to you, what do you want to bet that’ll stay secret in a place like this, that thrives on gossip? A guard mentions it to another guard, gets overheard by an inmate and soon the whole place knows.’