Closer Than Blood: An addictive and gripping crime thriller

Chapter 7

Years of street-honed reflexes kicked in. I grabbed Jake by the collar and pulled him backwards, collapsing through the doorway as the soft sound of silenced shots hissed through the air.

Chips of wood flew out of the porch and doorframe, some of the rounds punching through to bury themselves in the floorboards near our feet.

I kicked the door shut and got to my hands and knees, Jake right behind me as we scrabbled up the stairs.

“You fucking arsehole,” I found myself muttering over and over as the sound of shots was replaced by feet crunching on gravel.

We ran into Dad’s room and I looked around for something to use as a barricade. Although the door was locked, it wouldn’t take someone long to break through it.

“Help me with this.” I pointed at the heavy oak wardrobe against one wall. “Push it towards the door but leave a gap so we can tip it.”

Jake nodded, face pale with fear, but moved to help. Even with the two of us straining at it, we nearly couldn’t shift the monstrous wardrobe. How anyone had managed to get it up the stairs in the first place I had no idea.

As we half-dragged, half-shoved it into position, the sound of the front door being kicked in echoed through the house. Using more haste than care, I rocked the wardrobe over so that the top of it wedged itself against the door, forming a barrier that I doubted anyone would get through without a chainsaw.

That done, I pulled my phone out and dialled three nines.

“This is Charlie Papa 291,” I almost shouted as the stairs creaked outside. “I’m at seventy-four, repeat seven four Hillside, Woodingdean. I have armed intruders in the house and need urgent assistance. Confirm they have firearms and have fired on an officer.”

To give her credit, the call taker barely missed a beat as she plugged Ops One, the Inspector in charge of the control room, into the call.

His voice came on, clear but tense.

“Charlie Papa 291, confirm you have a firearms incident?”

“Yes!”

“Understood, we have units en route to you now. How many assailants?”

“Two, both armed with pistols. We’ve barricaded ourselves in one of the bedrooms upstairs.”

The door shuddered as someone threw their shoulder against it. I added my weight to the wardrobe and prayed it was thick enough to stop a bullet.

“OK, who is in there with you?”

“I’ve got one in custody for drug offences, it’s just us.”

“OK, understood. Gareth, right?”

“Yeah.” I flinched as a silenced shot sent a bullet burrowing through the door and into the back of the wardrobe with a dull thud. It struck the inside of the door behind me, knocking me forward slightly as it lodged in the wood. “Jesus! They’re shooting again.”

“We have a Hotel Foxtrot unit making from Lewes, short ETA. Can you hold out?”

“I fucking hope so.”

“OK Gareth.” He spoke to me the way you would a wounded animal, a soothing voice in the middle of what could be my final moments. I realised then how scared I was. This wasn’t a scrap, something that would result in broken bones at worst. No, this was someone determined and well able to kill us, and that thought was enough to make my knees shake.

Nothing we could do would stop these men from shooting us if they got through the door. No amount of training was enough to guarantee taking a gun off someone, and all it would take was for the second shooter to stand back and pick me off no matter how lucky I might be with the first.

A noise from the back of the room made me look up to see Jake opening the skylight window and hauling himself up on the sill.

“Jake,” I hissed, covering the microphone with my thumb. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“It’s me they’re after,” he whispered back. “I’ll get out and draw them away.”

“No you bloody won’t,” I growled, taking a step towards him.

The moment I took my weight off, the door opened a crack and the wardrobe threatened to topple. A pistol poked through and fired shots at random into the room.

Throwing myself against the wardrobe, I was rewarded with a grunt of pain and the hand withdrew. The door slammed shut again, giving me a chance to look back at Jake, or rather the space where he’d been. While I’d been saving our lives, my brother had taken the chance to run away.

Part of me hoped that he would draw them off, but long seconds passed and the shoving from the other side of the door didn’t lessen. Then, I heard the sound of an engine starting outside and patted the pocket where I kept my car keys. Where they had been until moments ago.

I closed my eyes. Somehow, in the midst of everything that had happened, Jake had managed to pick my pocket and was now escaping in a job car. The only way the day could get worse was if my assailants actually managed to shoot me.

As if on cue, both men began firing, rounds punching through the door and slamming into the wardrobe. Wood began to splinter, and I turned myself to one side to narrow my profile as much as possible, still leaning against the doors to keep them out.

Then, faintly, I heard the sound of approaching sirens echoing off the hills.

“The cavalry are coming!” I yelled. “Hear that you bastards? They’re coming for you!”

The shots stopped. Feet pounded down the stairs. A moment later I heard another car start, then pull away with a squeal of tyres.

Exhausted, I slumped down against the wardrobe, not daring to move it in case they’d left a shooter behind. I was still sat there, shaking with the aftermath of the adrenaline, when the world turned strobing blue and booted feet ran towards the house.

Chapter 8

“Jesus, Gareth, what the fuck have you gotten yourself into now?”

I looked up from where I sat, huddled under a blanket on the wall outside the bungalow, and grinned despite the circumstances. In amongst the flurry of uniforms and SOCOs milling around, the newly minted Inspector Jimmy Holdsworth, my old partner, was making his way towards me with a look that was half concern, half relief at seeing me in one piece.

“Inspector Holdsworth.” I threw a lazy salute. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m Charlie Golf nine-nine,” he replied, giving the call sign for the inspector in charge of the division. “So they’ve called me in to sort your mess out. What happened?”

“Jake.”

“Your brother? Don’t tell me he did this?”

“No,” I shook my head and began patting Jimmy’s pockets until I found his cigarettes. “But the guys who did were after him.”

I took two cigarettes from the packet, then slipped one back when Jimmy shook his head and passed me a lighter. I lit mine and coughed, it had been almost a year since I’d last smoked.

“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 hand. “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.