Sixty-Three
Karl
Karl had memorised the basic location of St Dunstan’s and was there twenty minutes before he was due to meet the detective. He parked 500 feet away on a side street. He expected the police to be on the lookout for guys sitting in parked cars, so he decided he would walk. First, he checked the back of the Caddy for something to wear, and was rewarded. A hi-vis jacket, which wasn’t the ideal outfit because he would stand out. But at least he would not stand out as Karl Seabury. There was also a backpack with a muddied football kit and boots inside. He took that with him, only because the police wouldn’t expect him to have a bag. The football boots, though, went onto his throbbing feet. Minus the screw-on studs, they looked like regular training shoes.
He got back in the van and closed his eyes. He wondered where everyone was. Katie – was she at the church, just another 500 feet away, awaiting him with tearful eyes? Liz – was she with her friend yet, or maybe even already in custody? If the latter, how were they treating her? Like a victim who needed compassion, or as a possible suspect in the murder of her husband? He imagined a team of cops surrounding her, oblivious to her grief as they tried to extract information about her dead husband’s criminal empire.
And the killers – out there, seeking him, closing in? Or had they fled with their tails between their legs?
Karl took a deep breath, and got out of the van for what might be his last five minutes as a free man.
‘Pray when will that be, say the bells of Stepney’ was a line from a famous poem that mentioned St Dunstan and All Saints Church. But that was the last thing on his mind as he walked along Stepney Way, heading east. He saw the tall Anglican church past black gates beyond a mini-roundabout, 160 feet away, and slowed down to pause at a bus shelter. He couldn’t see much happening at the church, but his view of the grounds either side of the building was restricted. He took a breath and started walking, expecting a swarm of cop cars to target him at any second. Once he got to the roundabout, it would be too late to turn because he would be exposed.
‘Here we go,’ he said to himself.
South of that roundabout, Katie sat in her car a hundred feet from the entrance to the church grounds, and twenty feet in front of a police car. She ignored the activity around her, including a bunch of teenagers shouting at each other in the park to her left, and two police officers talking to them about a report of a man waving a baseball bat around. There was no bat-wielding lunatic, though. Katie had called in the lie in order to get the police to the church. If she had called them about Karl, they would have arrived mob-handed. This way, when she told the two officers who she was and what was going on, nobody would be able to stop her getting to Karl. When she saw a man in a hi-vis jacket and carrying a bag, she tensed. She just knew it was Karl from his walk. It took every milligram of will to prevent herself from running to him.
‘Here we go,’ she said to herself, then turned and shouted to the policemen in the park.
North off that mini-roundabout was Danny’s van, parked on a zigzag white line just short of a zebra crossing. Parking here was a big no-no, and many honking cars had let them know this, but from this location the occupants could see McDevitt waiting by the church. In the mirrors, they saw a man in a hi-vis jacket cross the road and enter the church grounds.
‘Here we go,’ Danny said to Liz.
Two hundred and fifty feet east of the van, McDevitt stood by a tree near the church’s rear. He saw a man in a hi-vis jacket pass through the single black gateway. Into Mick’s world.
‘Here we go,’ he said into his phone, literally shivering with excitement.
East again, 280 feet away, just beyond the perimeter fence, Brad and Dave were sitting in the Mercedes Vito, chosen for its sliding side door. Both men had arrived only minutes earlier, at roughly the same time. Dave’s bike was in the cargo space, near Mick’s bags.
They didn’t even get time to relax before Mick called with the news: Seabury had arrived.
‘Here we go,’ Brad said to Dave.
Karl saw him almost immediately. On the left side of the church as he faced it. Some way back, under a large tree, leaning on it casually. He was in jeans and a black jacket, which Karl hadn’t expected from a detective.
But where was Katie? There was a black car in the driveway, but it was empty. And there was a sign in the rear passenger window advertising horse-riding lessons, so he doubted it was the detective’s anyway. He wondered where the man’s ride was, then figured he might not have one. He might be planning to call a police car. But where was Katie?
Karl stopped at the end of the main driveway. The man raised a hand and rubbed his forehead. Then gave him a thumbs up and waved him over.
‘Where’s my wife?’ Karl shouted.
‘In my car. Back this way. I didn’t want to park on main roads.’
Karl continued walking. His eyes ran over every tree, bench, nook and cranny, seeking armed cops ready to pounce. But he tried to relax, because by entering the church he’d passed the point of no return. If they were out there, hidden, it was game over already. His best bet was to go quietly.
He stopped thirty feet away. The guy was in the tree’s shadow. Big guy, grey buzz cut. There was something familiar about his face, but he couldn’t place it.
‘Where’s the car?’
‘Where’s Liz Grafton?’ the guy asked.
‘She didn’t want to come. She’s going to hand herself in in her own way. She didn’t want to do this without help.’
The man looked upset about that. He tried to hide it behind a smile, but the truth was in his eyes. ‘That’s good. So we need your statement, Karl. Shall we go?’ He pointed behind him, deeper into the church grounds, beyond thick trees. Something was wrong here.
‘I’m not coming in until my wife’s with me.’
‘She’s waiting. Don’t keep a pregnant woman waiting.’
He sounded impatient now, almost angry. Karl didn’t move. Something was definitely off. He wished he’d listened to Liz. The detective put a hand into his pocket.
‘Let me see your ID.’
The guy pulled a warrant card. It couldn’t be scrutinised from this distance, as the guy well knew. But Karl wasn’t about to step closer.
When he realised Karl wasn’t going to step up to check the ID, he slotted it away and laughed.
Right then, Karl heard the crunch of gravel and turned. A police car had appeared from behind the corner of the church, slowly, like a cruising shark. So, the detective had called in backup after all.
‘You lied to…’ he said as he turned back, ready to shout at the detective. But the guy was gone.
‘Karl!’
Katie’s voice. He turned back to the police car. Katie was there with two police officers.
‘Stay right there, Karl,’ one said, and both quickly made their way towards him.
‘Katie, what’s going on?’ he asked as the cops grabbed him, forced him down onto his front, and cuffed him.
‘Karl Seabury, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder—’
Katie pushed past and kissed his head. She was crying. ‘Are you hurt, Karl?’
‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence—’
Her hands ran over his face, neck, shoulders. He closed his eyes, overcome with shame.
‘Oh shit, this went wrong,’ Dave said. Brad looked past him, out the driver’s window, and saw Mick running across the grass. Alone. And he did not look happy. He slammed into the fence and started to climb.
Brad climbed into the back and opened the sliding door. Mick burst inside, knocking Brad back. Mick’s face was pure anger and there was spit on his lips.
‘Fucking piece of shit!’ he roared as he slammed the door. The spit flew from his lips.
‘What happened?’ Brad asked as he climbed back into his seat. Mick slapped the metal floor hard three times.
‘Drive. Fucking reverse. You should have been parked the other way anyway.’
Dave and Brad looked at him. ‘What went wrong?’ Dave asked.
‘Turn. Back the way you came in. Fucking go.’
‘Mick, what’s—?’
Mick kicked the back of his seat, hard. ‘Fucking go.’
He was clearly in no mood for explanations, so they had no choice but to get moving. Dave Y-turned in the road and headed back towards the gate they’d entered through. Mick kicked his seat again to urge him to go faster. Brad looked around and saw Mick pull out his gun before pulling down his woollen balaclava. Which meant this wasn’t over yet.
‘Bitch wife of his called the fucking cops. The police got him. They’ll go to Carr Street station probably, which means coming east past us. Stop at the end, at the junction.’
‘What are you planning, Mick?’ Brad asked.
‘Balaclavas on unless you want your faces all over the news.’
Brad and Dave looked at each other, panic rising. Dave’s foot eased off the accelerator.
Mick slapped the back of his head. ‘Faster. To the end.’
‘What the fuck, Mick?’ Brad said. ‘The cops have him? I hope you’re not—’
‘We are. We fucking are.’
Katie managed to convince the police to allow her to sit in the back with Karl as he was transported. He was handcuffed behind his back, which made sitting awkward, but this was a guy who might have killed a man earlier that day, so the two officers were taking no chances. They called the station to report their plan: bringing the suspect in. They also warned her not to touch him, so they sat ten inches apart, which was the most awkward part of all.
Katie didn’t speak until the car turned right out of the church grounds.
‘I got you help, Karl. A solicitor. As soon as we know where they’re taking us, I’m to call him, and he’ll come immediately.’
He was overcome with immense embarrassment. Not because of where he sat, but because Katie was with him. Her plan for this afternoon had been to get her nails done, not accompany her husband to jail.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t think about that just yet. You can do the begging for forgiveness part later. Did you kill that man?’
He couldn’t believe she’d asked him. But he understood why. When he said no, the look she gave him was all he could ask for at this moment: belief.
‘I don’t know what happened. He came after us. Two of them. One is dead, but I don’t know what happened.’
She rubbed her face. ‘This is a mess. Where is the one who caused all this trouble? That gangster’s wife?’
‘She didn’t come—’
‘Abandoned you after what you did for her, eh?’
‘No, no. She’s planning to hand herself in. But she didn’t want to do it like this.’
Katie looked at the policeman, not wanting to give away any more in front of them. ‘Look, let’s wait until the solicitor arrives. Let’s just talk about you. Are you okay?’
He saw the two cops exchange a glance. ‘No talking at all,’ one said.
Katie leaned her head on Karl’s shoulder, but the driver warned her to keep away. When she didn’t move, he started to slow the car. So, Katie moved reluctantly. She reached behind him to grab his cuffed hands, to let him know everything was going to be okay.
‘This is damn madness,’ Dave said. ‘I don’t want any part of this.’
‘You’ll get part of a prison cell,’ Mick shouted at him. ‘You fuck this up, you’re both going down for twenty. I’ll fucking see to it.’
Brad said: ‘Mick, he’s right. You can’t—’
‘There!’ Mick bellowed, and pointed out of the passenger window.
The Vito was at the junction, poking its nose out. Way down where there was a school and a 20 mph zone, they saw a police car come into view. Four hundred feet away. It took the roundabout and turned in their direction.
Seeing this, Mick clapped both men on the shoulders. ‘Right, back up a hundred feet. This is how it goes down…’
‘It’s done,’ Danny said from his place sixty feet behind the police car. ‘Can we go now?’
‘Wait until the station. Think of it as escorting a date home.’
So they drove on, but the station was never going to happen. Just seconds later, a van burst from a side road on the right. Too fast. Intentionally, Danny realised, a moment before the vehicle crossed the westbound lane and struck the patrol car like an anvil. There was a screech of rending metal and shattering glass and the smaller vehicle was shunted to the left as if fired from a slingshot.
‘My God!’ Liz yelled. ‘It’s them.’
Katie was looking at Karl, and Karl was looking at his knees, so neither of them saw the impact coming. The noise was tremendous, but dulled, as if taking place underwater. It all seemed surreal. He was thrown into his door as the car was whipped aside from under him, like crockery remaining in place as a tablecloth is pulled away. The next moment, Katie crashed into him. The car was stalled, half on the road and half on the pavement. The driver’s side of the front was a convoluted mess of curved and jagged metal, poking into the driver, and he was screaming in pain. The airbags had been shredded. The only flesh Karl could see was the back of his neck, red with blood. Just feet away was the battered front of a larger vehicle.
Katie was beside Karl. She was leaning against her door, clutching her belly and looking at it in fear.
‘You okay?’ he asked, surprised he’d been able to. He must not be hurt somehow.
She nodded. Unhurt also, which was a miracle. But she was still clutching her belly. When he put his hand there also, it seemed to jolt her out of shock, and she let out a noisy breath of relief.
Brad was an experienced man, familiar with blood and violence, and he was able to kick into autopilot to force his mind and body to react and do what needed to be done. But here, listening to the screech of tyres from stopping vehicles and the yells of onlookers, he froze. It had all happened so quickly, too quickly for him to actually think about the consequences. And now they were here, and all bridges were burned behind him, and the only two things he could do were sit numb and think about how they were all fucked now Mick had pushed them a million steps too far.
Mick, though, had entered autopilot mode all too easily. Brad heard the sliding door grate open, and then Mick appeared in his view through the windscreen. Pistol in hand. He yanked open the back door of the police van, and ducked in to yank Seabury out, who fell to his knees on the glass-littered tarmac. Mick then pulled open Brad’s door.
‘Get him. The fucker’s wife’s here, too.’
Brad got his arse in gear. He jumped out, grabbed Seabury’s handcuff chain and hauled him to his feet, then lifted him and dumped him into the back of the Vito. Brad clambered in after him, in time to see Mick roughly yanking Seabury’s wife out of the car.
‘Take her.’
Brad got out again and took her arm. She was screaming. He really didn’t want to hurt the man’s wife, especially when he saw she was pregnant, but they were all in now. Maybe there would be no reason to hurt her, and she could be let go later. For now, though, all loose ends needed tying up.
Mick had gone. He heard another door open.
‘I’m fucking driving,’ he heard Mick shout. He had gone around to swap places with Dave, and Brad’s attention was diverted as he looked through his window to see Mick pulling Dave out of the driver’s seat.
Even as he realised his mistake, Seabury was taking full advantage of it.
Brad felt a heavy weight crash into him, and down he went.
‘Run, Katie!’ Seabury shouted.
Brad tried to stand, but took another blow, a kick in the ribs that bought the Seabury guy another second or two. When the vibrating world calmed, he saw the woman running away down the street.
‘Get him back inside, you dickhead,’ Mick yelled as Brad saw him bolting in pursuit of the fleeing woman.
‘Leave her, Mick, cops coming,’ Dave shouted after him.
Dave had hold of Seabury. To reclaim some pride, Brad yanked the guy out of Dave’s grip and threw him back inside the van. He got in. Seabury tried to sit up, so Brad grabbed his hair in both hands. The handcuffs meant there was no block to come. So, he took his sweet time pulling back his knee and driving it forward, hard into the guy’s face. When he let go of the guy’s sweaty hair, Seabury collapsed. His head made a nice dong on the metal floor. Brad slammed the door just as Dave jumped back into the driver’s seat.
Dave started the stalled engine.
‘Wait for him,’ Brad said.
Dave started to reverse and turn the van in the road. ‘Fuck that. He can meet us later.’
Brad slapped Dave’s shoulder. ‘No. Wait.’
Seabury’s wife lost serious ground every second. Scared, hurt, and holding her fragile belly, she was helpless.
Mick was upon her in seconds.
She whirled and an arm came out defensively. Her hand caught him on the side of the face. Not a painful blow, but his balaclava was whipped away like a magician’s cloth.
In that moment, he did something that would haunt his dreams. With his face bared for all to see, he froze with shock. Like a swimmer who’d dived into frigid water, his brain and body locked up.
She tore from his grasp and ran, and he did not follow. Could not. Some way ahead, as he watched but was unable to move, two heroes took her and guided her away, into a shop doorway, and she was lost.
He turned and ran. Back, away. The going was hard, and his heart thumped like never before. Despite the gun still locked in his fist, fear rattled through him. He reached the van and by that time was light-headed. He dragged himself in and slammed the door, and only when it was shut did his breath explode in a noisy rasp.
‘Think those two cops are okay?’
‘Don’t give a shit,’ Mick said. ‘Get him inside while I check this out.’
But Mick did give a shit. Every criminal in the word could drop dead and the world would rejoice, but the guys in the car were cops, and Mick was a cop. Not enough common ground to warrant buying flowers but he hoped both guys were okay.
He paced outside the warehouse as he scoured the Internet for news of his name. Seabury’s bitch wife had somehow overheard his plan to meet her husband at the church, and no doubt his face had been captured by onlookers, so there was no chance now of coming out of this one unscathed. But it didn’t matter. He would be a ghost soon. Seabury would give up Grafton’s bitch in the next few minutes, prompted by a pair of pliers, and then they would go get her. Then he would sterilise his house and he’d be gone. There was no stopping that, but his plane ticket was now a useless scrap of paper because Seabury’s wife knew enough to burn him. But that didn’t matter, either. There were other ways of getting out of the country. He needed to be at the coast before the news broadcast his face.
The abandoned warehouse had whitewashed windows and gaping holes in the corrugated iron roof where noisy pigeons crowded along the rafters. It was empty apart from a scattering of wooden crates, vast amounts of trash and the remains of components from fairground rides.
Seabury was in a wooden chair in the centre of the littered floor with his hands cuffed behind his back and a second pair of cuffs securing the first to the chair’s backrest. When Mick entered, he heard Brad telling Seabury his only way to survive this was to give up the girl, walk away and keep his mouth shut.
‘I gave him that choice already and he fucked it up,’ Mick said from the doorway, in a deep voice.
He approached Seabury. Dave and Brad stood back. He stood five feet away and folded his arms. The pliers were in his hand, on show, impossible to ignore. He had his cap pulled low, the same one he’d worn when he’d confronted Seabury on the building site.
‘Where’s my wife?’ Seabury asked. His voice didn’t sound scared, although his eyes were. Fear overridden by worry for his loved one. They darted everywhere.
‘She got away, actually. Lucky girl. Right now she’s probably in a hospital, talking to my guys.’ He saw the puzzled look on Seabury’s face and laughed.
‘The police, Seabury, the police.’
Still utter confusion: Seabury hadn’t put two and two together yet. Mick made a big show of flicking off his hat.
The transformation on Seabury’s face was magical to watch. His eyes grew wide. His jaw quivered. He stumbled over whatever line he tried to speak. Mick liked the idea that Seabury had been half-expecting a miraculous rescue by Detective Chief Inspector McDevitt. It made his little reveal that much more beautiful.
‘Don’t abandon all hope yet,’ Mick said.
He had expected Seabury to latch onto this, but he didn’t. Instead, he simply asked ‘Why?’ and Mick realised he was talking about Grafton. He was angry that a nonentity like this fucker had dared to ask. That he believed he held enough importance to expect an answer.
‘Why did I kill that bastard? You don’t get the right to ask that.’ He wanted to smash him, but he didn’t. He took a step back and unzipped his jacket, unbuttoned the top of his shirt.
Seabury looked at the wound, and Mick could see the puzzlement on his face. Mick fingered the old injury. One misshapen right collarbone and a ragged semi-circular scar the size of a baby’s fist.
‘It’s deeper than you think. Even if it wasn’t, people have killed for less,’ Mick said. He tapped the wound with the pliers. ‘I didn’t let them fix it. I wanted the scar. A reminder. Kept me motivated. It’s all I have, apart from a few fucking routines that would make me look like a raving lunatic but keep me fucking sane, ironically.
‘You think it’s overkill. You don’t understand, of course. You’re not meant to. You aren’t part of this. You got involved because you wanted to help a woman. And you’re still alive right now because I’m giving you a chance to help another woman. Your wife this time. You have no idea how many cops are involved in this. They can get to your wife. The moment I give the order. My nightmare continues, day after day, but yours can end right now. I said don’t abandon all hope, right? Because you have a kill switch for this whole sorry fiasco, Seabury. When the shit raining down on you becomes too much, you can go ahead and press that kill switch by telling me where Grafton’s bitch wife is—’
‘I don’t know,’ Karl blurted. ‘I honestly don’t know.’ He struggled in the chair, trying to break either it or the handcuffs. He knew it was futile, because the three men would be upon him before he got to his feet. But he tried, anyway, because a drowning man will clutch even at the smallest straw floating within reach. He succeeded in toppling the chair, but the big detective grabbed him before it could crash down. He was set carefully upright once more. He smelled bacon on the guy, which somehow made this whole thing seem even more wrong. It was a reminder that he was human, that he ate, slept, lived a normal life.
The detective stepped back. ‘Don’t say a word yet. I’ll let that one go because you didn’t know any better. But not another word, because you only get one chance. A woman is going into that very chair you’re in, and you get to pick. Liz Grafton, or Katie Seabury. Do you understand? If you don’t tell me where Grafton’s bitch is, or you lie about it, I’ll send my man to go fetch your wife right now. I’ll rip you apart with these pliers and force-feed you to her. Tell me you understand that so we have no confusion.’
Karl nodded. He looked at Varsity, and a short black man he didn’t know. Both men looked concerned. They didn’t look comfortable with what was happening, which made Karl realise that these two henchmen weren’t as unhinged. But he also realised that concern proved he was a lunatic. Right then he had no doubt that he would not leave this warehouse alive. And that Katie was in grave danger.
‘Good,’ the detective said. ‘So the only word I want to hear from you is a name. Liz, or Katie. The urge to beg must be great, but you need to bite it back. So, calm down and think. You’ve got that ability, because there’s no pain yet, is there? I’m standing back, and nothing’s happened to you yet, the brain isn’t going wild with shock. So, use it to think. Think of your wife. And I don’t mean think of her lonely without you, bringing up that baby alone. I mean think of her in this chair. You slumped beside her, dead. And her being force-fed little torn-up bits of your flesh. You go ahead and take ten seconds to think.’
Karl flicked his eyes around: at the rusty old shutter, at the high windows and a doorless office at the back where there was a ground-floor window. His brain threw up escape scenarios, but they all depended on his being out of this chair which didn’t look likely. And he didn’t know where he was. He had been in the dark in the back of a van, unconscious for most of the journey, and they could have driven him anywhere. There might not be a soul around for miles. He might not even be in London.
He realised he’d been wasting time when Mick said: ‘Three, two, one,’ and stepped forward with the pliers held up.
Karl leaned back, and screamed for help.
A ringing phone froze everyone. Karl raised his hopes as the detective pulled out his mobile and looked at it with a worried frown.
‘You get another sixty seconds, Karl. Dave, with me.’
The detective and the black man went into the office. Karl saw him pull out a seat from the table and sit just out of view. He could see the man’s feet up on the table. His phone flew into shot and was clumsily caught by the black man.
Karl looked at Varsity, who looked uncomfortable. He knew his eyes were pleading.
‘You should just tell the guy what he wants,’ Brad said.
‘You should tell your boss that you can’t get away with this. The police will know everything because my wife will tell them.’ A threat, of sorts, but he had the feeling that hurting him was the detective’s domain alone. This guy wouldn’t lay a finger on him without permission.
Varsity held Karl’s look for a moment, then looked at the office, and then at the entrance, the glorious daylight and freedom beyond.
He went to a button on the wall and pressed it, then jogged over to the office. The metal shutter started to lower. It rumbled and rattled and moved slowly, and the square of daylight began to shrink, and with it Karl’s hopes of freedom.
Varsity walked into the office and said: ‘Hey, we still need to work on a plan to—’