Closer Than Blood: An addictive and gripping crime thriller

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.

I reached my desk and turned, remaining standing as I caught eye after eye until the noise reduced to a muted buzz.

“Listen in!” I called, and the sudden silence was deafening. “You’ve all no doubt heard about what happened yesterday, or at least a version of it, so let me be blunt. My brother, Jake, is out there somewhere with a bag full of stolen cocaine and some nasty bastards looking for him. They put three of our colleagues and two paramedics in hospital last night, and the Chief Super wants us to find him before they do. I want every single one of you to keep your ears to the ground. Speak to your sources, check your intel, go and walk the streets and talk to every single beggar and shoplifter you can find if you have to. Jake is arrestable for possession of cocaine, so if you see him then by all means, nick him. Hopefully we’ll be able to pull a still image off the marina CCTV from yesterday?” I paused and saw Phil Blunt nod. “Good. Make sure you all get a copy. He looks like me only not quite as handsome.” This got a few chuckles.

“Does it need to be an armed stop if we locate him?” Jane asked from her seat next to Phil.

“No,” I replied. “Unless you see anyone in close proximity who might be following him. Or if you get solid intel or sight on the people looking for him. No approaches to any suspects are to be made until they’ve been risk assessed and signed off. Follow if you can, but the moment you get clocked you turn and run. Clear?” Everyone nodded. “Good. OK people, let’s get out there and find my arsehole of a brother before he gets himself killed.”

The chatter of conversation returned as people went to their tasks. I waved my team into the Inspector’s office. He tended to go straight to the morning meeting when he got in, giving us a good couple of hours to use his office as we pleased.

My usual team consisted of Phil Blunt, Jane Finchley, the ever-excitable Tom Shepherd and the Barry’s, Barry Mason and Barry Everett. If we had a big job on, like we had the day before, I ‘borrowed’ other officers from the unit, but this was my core team, my direct reports.

“Morning all. What have we got?”

“Simmonds has been released from custody,” Phil replied, leafing through a file he’d brought in with him. He was, I noticed, wearing knee length shorts that not only clashed with his check shirt, but were also a big no-no as far as the command team were concerned. You could look as scruffy as you liked in our particular corner of the job, but show your knees? That was asking for trouble. “We were holding him on money laundering, but we’ve had to bail him until we can prove the money is hooky.”

“That’s for CID to worry about,” I said bluntly, “we’ve got bigger fish to fry now. Phil, you link in with Major Crimes, see if they got anything from the witnesses to the ambulance attack last night. I know we’re looking for Jake, not the gunmen, but too much intel never hurt anyone. And put some fucking jeans on, your legs are so white you’ll show out from a mile off.”

He nodded with a grin as I turned to the next officer.

“Tom, I want you out on the streets. Take Jake’s picture, and show it to anyone and everyone who might have seen him. Beggars, users, Big Issue sellers, I don’t care. Just find someone who’s seen him.”

“Yes, Sarge,” Tom sighed.

“Problem?” I asked before he could turn away. He hesitated, still young enough in service to be unsure whether or not to speak his mind, then shrugged.

“I was just hoping to get in on the action,” he said, looking at me from underneath his eyebrows as if expecting me to bite. “This all seems a bit …”

“Like proper intelligence work? Tom, it can’t all be Follows and car chases, mate. This is the real bread and butter of what we do, you know that. You want more adrenaline, go join LST,” I replied, more gently than I probably should have done. Tom was a nice lad, maybe too nice, despite his love of getting stuck in, and everyone but him knew he wasn’t really cut out for a career in intelligence. “Just get it done, yeah?”

Tom nodded, face glum, then followed Phil out as I continued speaking.

“Jane, I want you and Barry M to do house-to-house in the area where my car was recovered. See if anyone saw Jake when he dumped it. It’s a long shot, but it might turn something up.”

“Will do,” Jane confirmed, standing. “I’ll get one of the analysts to run a search on ANPR and known privately-owned CCTV in the area too.”

They filed out, leaving me with Barry Everett.

“Where does that leave us?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his bald head to wick away the sweat that was already forming.

“Trying to find out how Simmonds made contact with Jake in the first place. I’d ask Simmonds himself, but he won’t tell us shit.”

Barry nodded, donning his trademark brown leather jacket despite the heat.

We left the office, stopping only to grab our bags and a set of car keys. The bags contained what we referred to as our ‘fighting kit’; baton, spray and cuffs. Regulations stated that we should have them on us at all times while on duty, but I’ve never yet found a way to hide them effectively without tell-tale bulges all over the place. And that can be more dangerous in our little niche part of police work than being unarmed.

“How’s your dad?” Barry asked as we headed down into the bowels of the station.

“Dying,” I said, too harshly, then shook my head and softened my tone. “Sorry, that was rude, but he is. The docs gave him three months to live when he first got diagnosed, but here we are seven weeks later and they give him a week at the outside.”

“You know no one would blame you if you took time off to be with him, right?” Barry’s voice was soft, echoing gently as we passed through the locker room and down the steps into the underground car park.

“He would.” I barked a laugh. “He made me promise to find Jake and keep him safe.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Keeping Jake safe is like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling. It’s impossible, and you get covered in shit if you try. Still, it makes a nice change to be pulled in the same direction by Dad’s wishes and the Chief Super. Not sure what I’d do if I’d been ordered off the case instead.”

“Best not to think about it. Who’s driving?”

“I am,” I said and hurried to the driver’s door. Barry was an excellent officer, but a good driver he was not.

As my allocated vehicle was still on its way back from wherever Jake had left it, presumably via a forensics team, I’d taken the keys to one of the pool vehicles, a beaten-up old Vauxhall Corsa that had been ragged to hell and back.

“So where first?” Barry asked as we pulled out of the car park and onto William Street, the engine sounding more like a Land Rover than a Corsa.

“Whitehawk,” I replied, referring to the poverty-stricken council estate on the east edge of the city. “And you’d better keep your fighting kit handy, because this could get messy.”

Chapter 12

The Baker family were a legend in the City’s criminal underworld.

They bred like rabbits, and out of the seven brothers that made up this generation’s crop, at least three were usually in prison at any one time.

The family lived in five of the houses on Warbleton Place, a too-pleasant sounding name for the collection of tiny terraced homes that crowded both sides of the street. How the Bakers had convinced the council to let them congregate in one place I had no idea. You could spot their houses easily compared to the others; theirs were the ones with gardens full of discarded kitchen cabinets, old beds and other, less identifiable items.

Between them they terrorised the rest of the street and few were brave enough to report them to the police. They had their own brand of justice in east Brighton, and it usually involved baseball bats and the occasional petrol bomb.

More importantly, however, two of the Bakers – Eddie and Marcus – occasionally worked for Simmonds as muscle. They were the worst the family had to offer, happy to do absolutely anything, no questions asked, if the price was right.

Eddie had been arrested for attempted murder no fewer than three times, but never charged with anything more than GBH, and Marcus had a string of weapons offences and assaults that would put a London gang to shame.

We pulled up outside Eddie’s house, a tiny two-bedroom mid-terrace with a garden so covered in rubbish you could barely see the grass. In the few clear spaces, dog turds sat like brown landmines, waiting to go off should the unwary trespasser enter.

“You sure about this?” Barry asked, eyeing the place nervously. “They’ve not got the best track record when it comes to dealing with coppers.”

“Eddie thinks he owes me a favour,” I replied, slipping my pepper spray out of my bag and into the pocket of my jeans, just in case. “Remember when I nicked Colin Murphy last year?”

“The paedophile? Yeah, vaguely.”

“Well, turns out he was targeting the school where Eddie’s little girl goes. He was there outside the school when I nicked Murphy, nearly had to nick him as well when he found out there was a nonce trying to pick up kids there. Anyway, now he figures he owes me, so I was hoping to call in the favour.”

“And what if you’re wrong?”

“Then we have a nice polite chat and walk away. Even I’m not stupid enough to go two against however many of the Bakers are nearby at the moment.”

We climbed out of the car to the sound of aggressive barking coming from the house, accompanied by the scrabbling of claws on wood. The sound cut off abruptly with a yelp.

Sticking carefully to the path, I made my way towards the door with Barry close behind. Before I could knock it was opened by a disgruntled-looking Eddie, huge arms folded across his chest, rippling muscle underneath full sleeve tattoos. He was about my age but looked ten years older, his fair hair receding and greying at the temples. He wore a white vest and grey jogging trousers, the latter looking like they hadn’t been washed in a month.

“You’re on my property,” he said bluntly as I stopped a safe distance away.

“Actually Eddie, it’s council property, but I’m not here to fight.”

“Why are you here then?”

“I thought we could have a chat.”

“About what?”

“About,” I paused and looked around ostentatiously, “something that probably shouldn’t be discussed out on the street.”

He eyed me up and down, then glanced back over his shoulder. Deeper in the house, I could just hear the sounds of something heavy being moved, along with a rapid scraping noise.

“Is this a bad time?” I asked, trying to look past him without being too obvious.

“Depends. You looking for one of my brothers?” He squared his shoulders.

“Christ no. It’s about one of your employers, actually.”

“I’m on the JSA, ain’t got an employer.”

“Come on, Eddie, this is me you’re talking to. How long have we known each other?”

“Years, but that don’t make us friends.”

“I never thought that it did. I prefer to think of us as opposite tradesmen, but there’s no reason there can’t be a bit of mutual respect, is there?”

“All clear, Eddie!” A young-sounding voice called from inside. Eddie shut his eyes and shook his head. I tried not to grin, knowing he’d take it the wrong way.

“You can come in,” he said, then nodded at Barry. “But the poof stays outside.”

I felt more than heard Barry stiffen. Brighton was famed for being laid back to the point of falling over, but on the outskirts, homophobia was alive and well and both the Barry’s went nuclear when it raised its ugly head.

“That poof,” I said, before Barry could react, “is a police officer, my colleague and my friend. Whatever you and your brothers might believe, Eddie, you can’t catch gay, and even if you could Barry wouldn’t give it to you. Now stop being a dick, and either let us in or fuck us off, but get on with it.”

Eddie grunted something unintelligible and gestured us inside. I glanced at Barry to make sure he was happy going in, and he gave me a reassuring nod.

The hallway smelled like a kennel, if the dogs in it smoked forty a day each. I almost gagged as we were led through into a tiny lounge, where three mismatched armchairs crowded around a coffee table completely hidden by ashtrays, beer cans and coffee mugs.

One of the other brothers, Greg, was sat in a chair, while his eldest son, a gangly kid of about sixteen, hovered by a suspiciously clean sideboard on the far side of the room.

“Officers.” Greg nodded, lighting another cigarette to add to the haze that already filled the air. “What can we do for you?”

“It’s Eddie we need, actually.”

Eddie stepped in, closed the door and sat in one of the chairs, neglecting to offer either of us the third one. A quick glance was enough to know I’d have to burn my trousers after sitting in it anyway.

“Anything you can say to me you can say in front of them.” He lit his own cigarette, his face almost lost in the smoke.

“Eric Simmonds.” I let the words float there for a moment with the smoke, watching their faces carefully. “He just tried to make a buy from someone, I want to know how they were introduced.”

Eddie shrugged and stood. “Don’t know no Simmonds. Sorry you wasted your time.”

“What happened to mutual respect?” I asked, squaring up so that Eddie would have to go through me to reach the door. “You’re lying to me, Eddie.”

The heat seemed to drain from the room as the big man looked up at me from beneath his eyebrows, chin lowered like a bull about to charge.

“You what?” The words were soft, laced with menace.

“You’re lying. I saw your face when I said his name, you know him. I also know that you’ve been seen at his office on at least three occasions, so don’t treat me like a mug.”

“You come into my house and call me a liar? I should put you through the fucking window!” He roared the last, bringing Greg out of his own chair to loom protectively behind his brother.

I pulled my pepper spray out and began playing with the catch, keeping my eyes locked on Eddie’s.

“I don’t think that would do either of us any favours, do you?”

“Get the fuck out!”

“Fine.” I shrugged. “Barry, we’re wasting our time, let’s go.”

I heard the door open behind me and Barry’s hand landed on my shoulder, guiding me backwards so I could stay facing the angry brothers as I left. Eddie edged forwards in time with me, keeping just out of reach as Barry pulled me down the hallway and through the front door. I reached out and closed it behind me, almost in Eddie’s face, then turned and hurried back to the car, ignoring the frown Barry was throwing at me.

“What the hell?” He demanded once we were in the car. I started it before he had his door fully closed, then spun it around and shot out of the close. I tore up the road about a hundred metres then swung it around again, parking up behind a van.

“Tactical goading.”

Barry’s frown deepened. “You what now?”

“Just trust me, OK?”

“You can be a real pain in the arse, you know that?” he asked, shaking his head.

“I know,” I grinned, counting out the seconds silently in my head. I had got to forty-seven when a battered Ford Focus pulled out of the close. I pointed towards it as it shot towards the town. “But I’m a pain in the arse who’s good at his job. Now, let’s go see where our good friend Eddie is off to in such a hurry, shall we?”

Chapter 13

Simmonds’ office was in the basement of a seedy hotel on the seafront in Kemptown, the area of the city that started out full of trendy bars and shops and gradually bled into Whitehawk. It was about five minutes’ drive from Eddie’s house, but he made it in half that, ignoring red lights and give-way signs with equal abandon.

It was hard to keep up without being spotted, but as he pulled into the tiny car park in front of the hotel I was only a couple of cars behind him. I parked on the seafront opposite, just far enough down that we couldn’t be seen from the building itself, then we got out of the car and crossed towards the hotel, Barry still glaring daggers at me.

“Was it really that bad?” I asked as we approached the dirty white building, its neon sign almost obscured by bird shit and black gunk from the traffic on the busy road.

“You went into Eddie Baker’s home and called him a liar. People have died for less!”

“We were never in any danger.”

“Really? It looked pretty dangerous to me.”

“No.” I shook my head. “They wouldn’t have risked a scrap with us, not today.”

“Why not?”

“You saw the clear sideboard next to the kid, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Was there any other place in the entire room that wasn’t littered with crap?”

“Not from where I was standing, no.”

“They wouldn’t have fought us,” I assured him. “Greg is a burglar, which probably means whatever was on that sideboard when we knocked on the door was stolen property. They probably bunged it in the kitchen or upstairs while Eddie held us at the door. No way are they going to start a fight with us when they had that in the house. One touch of a button and their lounge is full of very annoyed coppers.”

“You put our lives on the line because of an empty sideboard? God help me.” He sounded impressed in spite of himself. “You really do like living dangerously, don’t you?”

“There’s another way to live?”

Barry shoved me, finally giving in to a rueful laugh. “So, what now?”

“We go and see Bobby at the hotel, see what we can hear.”

Bobby Dixon was the hotel manager, a small, inoffensive-looking man in his early twenties with bad teeth and a habit of looking at his shoes when he spoke. He’d come to our notice when he’d been nicked for allowing prostitutes to use the hotel for their business, and we’d kept him out of custody on the understanding that he let us listen in on Simmonds whenever we wanted.

We crossed the car park outside the hotel quickly and stepped through into the shabby reception area, the door creaking alarmingly as it swung shut.

It was dim inside, almost dark, and a bored-looking girl in her late teens glanced up at us with disinterest from behind the counter.

“You want a room?”

“No, we want Bobby.”

“He’s in his office, you know the way?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. Before we passed her she was buried in her phone again.

Bobby’s office was at the back of the building, directly above Simmonds’ basement one. Thanks to some holes carefully drilled in the floorboards, it was now possible to hear everything happening in the room below, which was how we’d known about the drug deal in the first place. It was low-tech, but it worked.

I pushed the office door open without knocking, to see Bobby asleep in his chair, feet up on the desk and head back as he snored.

“Hey, wake up. Need your office.”

He started and scrambled to his feet, then saw who it was and immediately looked down at the floor.

“Oh, sure, uh, sure.” He hurried out, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, then paused in the doorway. “I don’t suppose, uh, I could find out when …”

“When I say so,” I said, cutting him off. “You’re lucky you’re not in a cell right now.”

“But what if he finds out I’ve been letting you use the place? He’ll kill me!”

“Then you’d better make sure your staff keep their mouths shut, because the only way he’ll find out is if someone here tells him. Now bugger off.”

He nodded, still looking at the floor, and left, closing the door behind him. As soon as he was gone, I rolled back the stinking carpet in the far corner and after perhaps thirty seconds of listening we were rewarded with the sound of approaching voices from below.

“… my fucking house and starts asking questions about you.” Eddie’s voice was loud enough to hear clearly, but when Simmonds responded, I had to strain to catch the words.

“What did he ask?”

“He wanted to know how you got in touch with that Jake bloke.”

There was a pause. “And what did you tell him?”

“That I didn’t know you.”

“And what happened then?”

“I threw the cunt out!”

“You threw him out?”

“Well, yeah. I told him to fuck off and he did.”

“Did he mention that Jake is his brother?”

“His brother? He didn’t say nothing about that.”

“Probably would have done if you’d given him the chance. Anyway, it’s a good job we didn’t buy off him in the end. Word is he stole that coke from the Russians and they want it back, along with his head.”

“Russians?”

“Yeah, a gang of them from London. They’ve put feelers out for Jake, want him dead or alive as long as they get their bag back. Fifty grand, they’re offering, so you tell your brothers that the one who finds him gets a cut. Any idea where he might be hiding?”

“No,” Eddie replied, his voice filled with greed, “but I can think of fifty thousand reasons to find out.”

Chapter 14

Barry and I sat in near-silence outside the Chief Superintendent’s office, broken only by the curses I was muttering under my breath as we waited for her to call us in.

“We’ll find him before they do,” Barry said finally, doing his best to sound positive. “There’s not many places he can hide.”

“Fifty grand!” I replied, shaking my head. “I know a dozen people who would carve his heart out for half that. It’s going to turn into a free-for-all. And speaking of which, what kind of fucking moron steals drugs from a Russian gang?”

“It is pretty stupid,” Barry agreed cautiously. “But maybe he didn’t realise …”

“This is Jake we’re talking about. If there’s one thing you can say about my brother, it’s that he doesn’t care who he’s screwing over, as long as he gets what he wants.”

I was about to say more, but broke off as the Chief Super opened the door to her office and gestured us in. She was back in uniform today, her shirt and trousers spotless and perfectly pressed.

“What news?” she asked as we all took seats around a small table near her desk. “Have you found him?”

“No, and we’re not the only ones looking.” I launched into my explanation, watching Striker’s frown deepen until it was almost a scowl.

“So,” she said when I’d finished, “let me make sure I’ve got this right. What you’re telling me is that the Russians your brother stole drugs from have put fifty thousand pounds on the table for his head?”

“That’s about the size of it,” I confirmed. “And I still have no idea where Jake is.”

“Fuck.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“So, what’s your next step?”

“Well it occurs to me that if the Russians have been offering money, they’ve been talking to people and that in turn means a trail we can follow. Instead of looking for Jake, I think we should concentrate on them.”

“OK, I can see the logic in that. Where are you going to start?”

“My team are already out and about asking questions. While they’re doing that, I was thinking we could canvass the local B&Bs and hotels. They’ve got to be staying somewhere, and if Jake was telling the truth then they don’t have much of a network down here. I also want to find out if we’ve got anything from the ambulance on Wilsons Avenue – there were loads of people with their phones out when we arrived.”