HUNTED
Two days after that night in Manchester
Constable Annie Blake stood at the back of the interview room, by the door, hands behind her back. Anonymous as a person, barely a presence. Just a faceless uniform. Not what she joined the force for. But observing, processing all the time.
Before her, Dean Foley, his expensive solicitor next to him, was being questioned by two detectives. Two days in custody had scrubbed off Foley’s usual dangerous charm. Now there seemed less pretence about who he was or who he thought he was.
She had seen these two detectives at work before. DI Torrance and DS Sharp. Physical opposites: gravity pulled Torrance’s large body downwards like a full bin bag. His hair was the colour of used tea bags, fingers also, from nicotine. Sharp’s name was near literal, he was all bones and teeth. His elbows looked like they could cut. The only thing they had in common, she thought, was they were both mid-level careerists. Doing what they would call a good job, which for them meant crossing the ‘t’s and dotting the ‘i’s. Putting a file together to present to the CPS. And that would be that.
I won’t end up like either of them, Blake thought.
In the short time she had been on the force she had grown to detest most of her superiors. They were dull time-servers, superior in name only. She was there for advancement. In whatever way she could do it.
Foley’s mouthpiece droned on, making sure he was seen to be earning his fee. The detectives nodded, answered his points briefly. Foley sat so still it barely seemed he was breathing. He looked at Blake like an animal waiting for its prey to display the slightest weakness.
The detectives started the tape, cautioned him, ran through their list of pre-prepared questions. Foley said his ‘no comment’s in as disinterested a manner as possible. The detectives kept going, the solicitor looked alert. Foley gave the same answer, not even changing the bored, off-hand inflection in his voice. It was a charade to be endured by both sides. In TV dramas interviews were shown as violent confrontations, verbal cat and mouse games, even near–religious confessionals. Real life was nothing like that.
Or so she thought.
‘So where’s the money, Dean?’ Torrance, the senior detective asked.
Foley paused, didn’t answer straight away.
His solicitor looked at him, waiting for an answer. Before he could give it, sensing an opening, the other detective, Sharp, jumped in.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you’ve got no reason to lie about that, we’ve got you bang to rights on everything else. What have you done with it?’
Torrance leaned forwards. ‘Come on, Dean, what you done with it?’
Foley paused again. Then answered. ‘I haven’t got the money.’
The solicitor started to speak. Foley waved him silent as if batting away a fly.
Torrance again. ‘What you got to lose, Dean? Tell us what you’ve done with it.’
Foley, for the first time in the interview, displayed an emotion other than assumed boredom. Anger. He leaned forwards. ‘Why don’t you talk to Mick Eccleston, eh? Or whatever his real name is.’
‘Why would we do that, Dean?’
‘Because if anyone’s got it, he has.’
The two detectives shared a glance. ‘And why would he have it, Dean? Why not you?’
Foley sat back again. ‘You’d have to ask him, wouldn’t you? Maybe you don’t pay him enough. Maybe he wanted some overtime. I mean, he’s not earning with my anymore. He’s going to be skint from now on, isn’t he?’
The detectives kept questioning him, pushing. But Foley just slumped back in his chair, the flare of anger gone, indifference assumed once more.
He said nothing but ‘no comment’ for the rest of the interview. But he didn’t need to say anything more. Constable Annie Blake had heard all she needed to.
Dean Foley, she decided, was a man she would keep an eye on.
The next day in Manchester
She had to show her warrant card to be admitted to the hospital room. Even then she had to justify why she was there. The uniform on the door was following his orders to the letter. She would have to be clever if she wanted to pass and not show up on the official log. Squeeze the tears out, pretend to be his girlfriend.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t let you in. He hasn’t given his statement yet. He can’t have anyone talk to him until he’s done that.’
Turn it up a notch. ‘Please, he’s . . . he’s all I have . . .’
The uniform checked the corridor both ways then, with a sigh that said he was charting new territory but wasn’t without a heart, said, ‘Go on, then. But don’t be long. I’m supposed to mark everyone in and out.’
She gave him a smile so radiant the red face he was left with could have been sunburn. That’s how easy it is to manipulate men, she thought. They’re fucking idiots.
The only time Blake had previously been into a private hospital room was when her grandfather was dying of cancer. All the grandkids were trooped in and presented, told to stand at his bedside looking suitably upset. The man had been an absolutely tyrannical bastard before the cancer had slowly crippled him and robbed him of his power. Most of them, those who had been on the receiving end of his wrath, including her, were there just to see that he wasn’t coming back.
Then, the room had been bleak, like he was just place-holding the bed until a proper, more deserving occupant came along. Blake had managed to squeeze tears out then, too. It didn’t work. He was too far gone to notice and she still got nothing from his will.
She often thought she had joined the police because of her granddad. Regretted he didn’t live long enough to see her in her uniform. To continue his family reign of terror when she was able to physically fight back, have him arrested if necessary. Or just hurt him. A lot.
She entered the room. It was completely different from her last visit. As if she had walked onto a movie set, except in a Manchester hospital. With tubes and wires hooked up to sighing, pinging, flashing surrounding machines. Foxy lay on something more like a science– fiction life support pod than a bed. Blake was impressed. But at the centre, the recipient of all the life-sustaining attention, looked nothing like the man she used to know.
His face was mummified with bandages, tubes poking out of his nose and mouth. His arms and body were similarly covered, with plastic casts and bandages, one arm supported. His legs were under the cover. She didn’t want to look. She sat down in the chair beside the bed.
‘You stupid bastard,’ she said, surprised to find herself crying. ‘You stupid, stupid bastard . . .’
Undercover, he had said. With Dean Foley’s gang. This is it. This is my glory job . . .
He shouldn’t have bragged about it. Could have compromised the operation. And his head seemed to be in the wrong place from the start. The glory job. You should have just done what you were supposed to . . .
All that time spent together in the academy. They had bonded straight away. Recognised something in the other that was there in themselves. An ambition, a hunger to succeed. They almost tore each other apart, when their relationship started. They were inseparable.
Both posted to Manchester’s inner city, Blake found opportunities for advancement harder to come by than Foxy did. And when he was posted undercover, part of her – quite a large part, if she was honest – resented him. The way he celebrated without taking her feelings into account.
She had watched him, preening before a mirror, trying to get his manner, his attitude, his clothing right. You’ve only got this job because you’re black, she wanted to say. They only want you in the gang because you’re officially representative of the racial mix in that area. That someone somewhere is getting a pat on the back for ticking a box on a racial quota form. But she didn’t say any of that. Because that would have been the end of their relationship. And Foxy, if he stopped to think about it, might even have agreed.
At first he had been keen. Going along with the gang, delivering his reports on time, crammed with as much detail as he could manage. But he wasn’t getting anywhere near the top of the organisation. He had been working his way up, trying to worm his way onto the right side of Dean Foley, when this bloke Mick Eccleston arrived out of nowhere and was fast-tracked up the promotion ladder. That was the turning point for Foxy. When he saw all his hard work come to nothing, when he mentally said fuck it and decided if he was supposed to be a gangster then it was time he made some money as a gangster. That was when he went to the dark side.
Blake noticed straight away. He changed. Became harder, more callous. He brought her gifts. She rejected them.
‘What the fuck is this supposed to be?’ she said, throwing some expensive, trashy earrings on the sofa while he stared at her, angry enough to punch her. ‘I’m not some gangster’s moll. And you’re not a gangster. You’re a copper. Remember that.’
They grew apart. Blake moved out of the flat they shared, found her own place. He called in fewer and fewer times, eventually stopped coming round at all. She didn’t know where he was.
And then this happened. No one knew all the facts yet, but there was a dead girl involved, a crashed car, a missing gun. And, if he came round, a potentially very expensive and very ugly court case. When he came round. Keep saying that, she thought. Keep saying that.
She kept staring at him. Almost wanted to reach out, hold his hand.
She didn’t know how long she sat there but after a while she realised that the room was now dark and she was holding his hand.
He wasn’t going to wake up and even if he did, she had nothing prepared to say to him. So she stood up, left the room.
Thought about him lying there. Look what the job had got him. Thought of those two detectives just going through the motions with Foley. Look what the job had done to them.
Thought of what Foley had said about Mick Eccleston. The undercover cop was in the wind now, gone. But that didn’t mean he was untraceable to police like her. And it didn’t mean Foley couldn’t play a part in finding the money either.
She knew what to do. It wouldn’t be easy but it could be done.
Find a copper in Witness Protection with over two million of stolen money.
Whatever happened to her on the force, she wouldn’t let it grind her down.
Because this would be her own glory job.