Chapter Eight

 

Of course, Lukas Mills wasn't someone who you could just drop round to visit. He was itinerant – not exactly homeless, but then again, not someone who had one fixed address.

She started with the address she'd last known him to live – a house in a rundown terrace in one of the more interesting ends of Bradwick. A nervous looking woman with dirty blonde hair opened the door a crack, looking suspicious.

'Is Lukas here?' Emma asked.

'Who's asking?'

'Just a friend. Haven't seen him for a bit. He was living here.'

'Yeah, he was. Not any more.'

The woman's attitude was starting to grate on Emma. 'I figured that much out. I'd like to find him.'

'You tried his phone?'

'Of course. He's not answering. Sent him a text.'

There was an awkward silence. Emma had way more experience with waiting for answers than this woman.

'You could try the pub,' she said when the silence had stretched too long. Emma raised her eyebrows. 'Down the road, the Wheatsheaf. Might be in there.'

Emma didn't have time to say thanks before the door was shut. She got increasingly frustrated over the next hour or so, tracking him between pubs, where she was viewed with distrust, and houses that may or may not have been squats but where drugs were certainly being consumed.

Eventually, when she was on the point of giving up, her phone chirruped with a reply to her text. Cryptically it was just an address but it did come from Lukas' mobile.

She wondered what he was playing at, but followed it to the nicer end of Bradwick. She had to park and walk the last part as it was in a touristy area of winding streets that led to the sea.

Finally she found the cottage and was led inside by Lukas. Soon she was settled onto a couch in a living room. To her surprise, it was very nice, and even quite clean. There was a bay window that showed a view out over the sea.

'Well, you are a hard man to find. I feel like I've walked all over Bradwick looking for you. And here you are – this is a bit of a step up for you. No wonder none of your old friends knew where you were.'

'Yeah, yeah, new girlfriend, down here on holiday. Rich parents have this place as a holiday flat, so...' he shrugged and looked around at his surroundings. 'I'll get you a tea.' Emma watched him move around the space. He still had his long blond hair and was still thin but she thought he'd filled out a bit. If she wasn't mistaken, he wasn't quite as wasted as he usually was.

The living room was open plan with the kitchen so Emma could keep talking to Lukas while he fixed the tea. 'So how have you been keeping?'

'Like you see, I'm good, landed on my feet.' There was something evasive about his manner though.

'What are you doing here? What I've heard this afternoon, you haven't been around your usual haunts for a good ten days. Who are you hiding from?'

'Well, with your job, you must've seen the stats. It's a battlefield out there.'

'I've been out of the loop for a bit. Formal investigation into the raid at the industrial estate means this is my first week back at work. We've just been collating stats from the hospitals and everything.'

'Well, with King out of the picture and your lot lifting a whole load of gear from the Birmingham gang, it's turned into a free-for-all. Any little thug who can pay a few fourteen-year-olds reckons he's the next boss. Until someone stabs him, that is.' He shook his head. 'And the market is all over the place. Some stuff not available. Weird pills and legal highs coming in then disappearing. You never know if you're going to get the good stuff or something cut with some godawful crap.'

'So, this is your solution is it?' Emma looked around the flat.

Lukas shrugged, apparently unembarrassed. 'Listen, Kelly likes a bit of rough for a holiday romance, and I could do with cleaning up for a while. I've done it before, it's no problem. I'd rather this than wondering if some school kid's going to stick a knife in me to prove a point. And like I said, I'd like to get out of my head, but it's just too much of a gamble right now.'

Emma shook her head. 'And where is the mysterious Kelly right now?' She wasn't sure she could deal with a posh, possibly jealous girlfriend.

'She's gone up to Weston with a few friends from London. Apparently there's a posh hotel there so they can drink cocktails on a balcony and watch people on the beach. Didn't seem like my kind of scene.'

Emma could see that he was doing his best to look at home in the chic holiday cottage, but she couldn't imagine him sipping cocktails or shopping in upmarket boutiques. Finally he came through with two mugs of tea and a pack of biscuits under his arm. Emma laughed.

'What's so funny? I've got you a tea and a few biscuits.'

Emma picked up the mug – it had fresh milk in it. 'I owe my sergeant an apology. She reckoned that I'd be having tea and biscuits instead of working hard. I never thought it'd actually happen, though.'

'Like I said, I landed on my feet.'

'Yeah, but really, Lukas, who are you hiding from?'

'I ain't giving you no names, but I did get in a spot of bother. Got some gear, paid the guy. He goes out and gets stabbed, just stuck in the leg, not killed or nothing. But he loses his money. Now his boss reckons somehow I've got to pay twice.'

'That can't be right?'

'They're talking bollocks about how maybe I was working with the guy who shanked his dealer. Got my money back. At this stage it's not really business any more. It's not about buying cheap and selling expensive, making a profit. This is more like extortion or a protection racket. Get some thugs to scare people and collect up the money. At the moment it's down to who has the most bodies to throw at a problem.' He looked around at the comfy sofas and pastel colours. 'So I'm hiding up. When we can figure out who's won, then I'll make amends if they need making.'

Emma privately thought to herself that when she found out how it all ended, she'd see if she could put in a word to make sure Lukas came out all right.

'I know you're hiding out here, but is there anything I can take back to my bosses?'

Lukas shrugged, as always moving with a natural, fluid grace. Emma deliberately shut down that part of her that found him attractive. She couldn't go there. 'I think they need to go back to basics. While you've been gone, the police haven't done any more than nibble around the edges of the problem. And while you've had a power vacuum, the same thing has happened to the dealers I know as well. First thing you need to do is clamp down at the train stations and make some inroads into the County Lines.' He paused to see if she was listening. 'You know I said earlier that it wasn't about commerce? Well that's the local boys. County Lines are from the cities. They want to sell product and take money back to their handlers. Any violence they do is usually to other rival gangs, not locals. What you really need is to set up the same system that was running before.' Reading Emma's expression, he quickly moved on. 'No, not backhanders and missing product. No, you need to get a network of informers and fast. Find out whose house is being cuckooed and what the new phone numbers are. You need the inside information on the County Lines before they get established. Once you can get a bit of control over the outsiders, then you'll have half the battle won.'

'And you won't mind telling me who I should be arresting? Well, I was going to say your friends. But you know, I'll be rounding up dealers and trying to reduce the drug trade overall.'

'Don't get too many ideas about how effective you'll really be, babe. What I want is a nice peaceful town, not too many knives and not too many idiots trying to prove how hard they are. No matter what you do I'll always be able to get a bit of blow or some charlie to liven up a weekend.'

Emma nodded then sipped her tea. She could see his logic. In fact, she had long ago understood that it was shared by most of the residents of Bradwick, from the great and the good of Spalley Road all the way down to the lowest residents of Coopers End. All anyone really wanted was to go about their business without fear of being mugged or stabbed. If they had a bit of money left at the end of the week and could get married and settle down, then they'd be happy. Especially if no one looked too closely at how they spent that money.

It did leave her with one problem though. How to reactivate Haines' network of informants without offering them the same incentives as before?

'King Kabs are still going, you know,' Lukas said. He'd always had that knack of knowing what she was thinking. 'Might be worth making enquiries, seeing who's running the show now Billy's no longer on the scene.'

Emma nearly asked if they were still offering extra services alongside taxi fares, but she knew the answer. She was also on Lukas' wavelength and had definitely picked up the inference in his words. She would definitely have to see how the land lay over at King Kabs.

Lukas was restless, his leg jiggling up and down as he waited. Finally he asked, 'What can you tell me about the raid out at that abandoned industrial estate? The one that got you suspended? I keep hearing things, and I know we ain't got Billy King no more, and the head of one of the big city gangs was arrested.'

Emma picked up her cup and swirled the dregs around. There was no getting away from it. 'Okay, but don't go spreading it around.' She briefly filled him in on that evening, deliberately downplaying the emotion, and mainly focusing on what had happened to Haines and King.

Lukas nodded slowly. 'That makes sense. And are you okay? I know if I had to see someone killed in front of me, I'd be proper messed up. And I know you train and all that, but it's still dangerous if you go up against someone in a fight. Anything can happen. That's why I'm hiding out here.'

Emma shook her head. How could she explain the emotions swirling around her head? She had saved her boss and failed him at the same time. She hadn't prevented his life-changing injury but she had stopped the life-ending one. On top of which she'd seen death close up too many times for it to just slide off.

Lukas seemed to understand her need to not reply. He stood up and moved towards the balcony that opened off the back of the house. 'Fancy a cigarette?'

'I gave up.'

'I know. Right when you left home. Always tickled me that did. Most folk start smoking when they leave home, not quit.'

'Yes, then.'

Fair play to Lukas, he had landed on his feet. There was a lovely balcony looking out over the sea. Emma leant on the railing with her cigarette, taking shallow breaths as she wasn't used to smoking. But the shared experience, and the waves crashing onto the beach, helped to calm her down.

She had managed not to cry, but it was a close run thing. She was fine, always fine, right up to the point where someone cared for her. All it had taken was Lukas asking her if she was okay. How was she coping? Just like every other officer, work hard and drink hard.

'Thanks for that,' she said, flicking the end into the scrub off the balcony. 'No, I'm not coping particularly well, as you asked. I feel like I saved my team and that I betrayed them at the same time. I feel like I'm superhuman because I beat those thugs but also I feel incredibly vulnerable because I nearly failed. If one bit of luck hadn't gone my way, I wouldn't be here. Add in a big dollop of survivor's guilt and generally feeling like a fish out of water because everything's changed and that's about how I'm feeling. But each day is better than the last, so, you know. Getting there.'

Lukas nodded. 'Wait here.' He went back into the kitchen. 'I don't want to make your day worse or set your recovery back, but have you seen the paper today?'

'No, after the debacle of the raid I've been trying to avoid the press. Well, there's one journalist who's got hold of my number and she'd love to do a feature on me.'

'And you're not keen?' There was a mischievous glint in Lukas' eye. He knew full well why she'd be more retiring than most.

'Apart from the obvious, I know what they'd do. I'd be reduced to the most humiliating single phrase to make it simple for the readers to understand. I'd be "pint sized hero" or "blonde bombshell" or something else. And then, do you know what would happen?'

'Go on then, what would happen after that?'

'There would be press cuttings everywhere. In my locker, on my desk, you name it. And with technology now, it'd never be forgotten. The police can be unforgiving if you get in the press.'

'But you did a good thing. Saved Rob Haines' life.'

She turned around to lean on the railing, with her back to the beach. 'Yeah, but that's what we're meant to do. At the end of the day, I saw crimes being committed and a fellow officer being put in danger so I acted. I got lucky because they were untrained and underestimated me. And I got one kick that just landed right.'

'You can say that again,' Lukas said, tapping the paper.

'It's not going to be good news, is it?' Emma asked.

'No, but I thought you'd rather hear it from a friend first. Get prepared, like.' He passed the paper across, folded to a story on an inside page.

There was a large photo of Trevor Swain, the man who'd hit Rob Haines over the head and nearly killed him. The headline was short and to the point – "Police Brutality?" – at least there was a question mark. She skim-read the article about damage to the ligaments in his knee, the surgery he'd had and the long process of recovery. Finally, she got to the point – the fact that he was suing the police for compensation due to his injury plus loss of earnings.

'You've read this?' she asked.

'Yeah. Was that you then?'

'That was me. They conveniently don't mention that he was about to kill a man. He was lining up to take a kick at Rob Haines' head when he was lying on the ground. I kicked out the leg he was standing on.'

Lukas picked up the paper and scanned it. 'That accounts for the damage. It says here he's had surgery, and is now lined up for six months of physiotherapy and rehabilitation. And even after all of that he might never walk properly again. His career as a security consultant is over.'

'He was a second-rate bouncer and bodyguard before this happened. And he doesn't have a career. All that medical work will be done while he's on remand in prison, waiting for his trial to start.'

She turned around to look over the sea again. During her enforced time off, she had found it hard to sleep without the routine of going to work. In the small hours of the morning she had gone back over the events in that alley, scrutinising her decisions and seeing if she could have done anything differently.

She had been up against two armed men. Logic dictated that she had to put one out of the fight before tackling the other one. If she'd gone easy on Swain, then she'd have been at risk of him attacking her from behind while she dealt with Lawson. Even if she'd put him onto the ground but not seriously injured, he would still have been able to strike out at her legs while she was facing a man with a knife. That was a potentially lethal situation.

She sighed, this hadn't been why she joined the police. She genuinely wanted to help people not put them in hospital with life changing injuries.

'You okay, babe?'

'Yeah. I do feel kind of bad that I wrecked his leg. But I just can't see that I had any choice.'

'You didn't. It was those two goons who made the choices. They went there with weapons, they made many choices stretching back years that threatening and beating up people was how they wanted to make their living. It was bound to come to a bad end sooner or later. It's just your bad luck that you were the one to do it.'

'Yeah. I know you're right. Logically it all stacks up. Doesn't stop me feeling bad.'

'Well, if it's any consolation, those two guys are washed up anyway.'

'What do you mean?' Emma turned back around to study Lukas.

'If you pay some guys to act as your bodyguards and hired muscle, there's one thing you need more than anything. Loyalty. This isn't a world where you can go to human resources and complain that they're in breach of their contract.'

'And those two sold out to a higher bidder.'

'Exactly. I mean, literally stabbing someone in the back is bad, as is attacking a man lying on the ground, but that is worse. Even when they get out of prison, no one will go near them.'

'Strangely, that is good to know.'

'So, what do you reckon the score will be with the legal crap?'

She paused, unsure of whether she should disclose confidential details. But Lukas was safe – he'd never betrayed a confidence. 'The physical evidence is so stacked against him, I might not even have to take the stand. He's definitely going down for murder.'

Lukas nodded and tapped the paper. 'So he won't have a leg to stand on.' He creased up at his joke and Emma joined in with the laughter. It really was a ridiculous case, done for publicity and not much else. It certainly had no chance of success but she supposed she should go and check in with the police legal service, just in case.

'What do you mean, murder?' Lukas asked. 'I thought he didn't kill Haines.'

'Doesn't matter,' Emma said, shaking her head. 'He was working with Lawson, who killed Billy King, so he can be got on joint enterprise. Both of them will face trial for murder and attempted murder as they were together.' She frowned at the article again. 'This makes no sense at all. Every time I was called in to meet with my bosses about what happened, I asked them if I was in trouble for excessive force.'

'And?'

'They said it was fine. Clear danger to public, police officer already attacked, two on one and they had weapons.'

'That doesn't make sense,' Lukas said, picking up the paper. He frowned as he read it carefully, word for word. 'Yeah, thought so. It's all fluff. I wondered how come he managed to get in the paper while on remand. He didn't. They might have a photo of him, but this is all the lawyer.' He nodded as he kept reading. 'Very smart. No mention of the offences Swain's charged with. Just trying to generate some sympathy and a bit of money at the same time. It's all the lawyer talking and not really saying anything.'

'That's a relief, but I'll keep an eye on it.' She shook her head. 'It's bad enough that we're being asked to do more with less, go out single-crewed and stuff, but now we've got to deal with idiot lawyers.' She picked up the paper. 'His name is Bishop, I'll make a note. I know that defendants have to have representation but some solicitors are better than others.'

They wandered companionably back into the living room.

'I know you said it was okay but I'd better make myself scarce before Kelly comes back. And I've got a report that I promised to write back at the office.'

'So, you'll be all right?' Lukas asked when they were at the door.

'You know, I think I will.' It was clear now – the legal case was completely frivolous given how serious the fight at the industrial estate had been. Time in Lukas' company was just what she'd needed as an antidote to office politics. She knew however that this respite was short lived – she had made promises to Suse and to return to the station.

* * *

After her break with Lukas, Emma had to go straight back to the station. She spent a frustrating afternoon at her desk. She had statistics to collate on overdoses and violence. Although the individual incidents were dramatic, the numbers themselves were very boring. It was a case of copying and formatting and then comparing and looking for patterns.

When she compared the most recent numbers from those she'd worked on when she'd first started, it made sobering reading. Lukas was right – in her absence Bradwick had turned into a battleground. Gone were the days of stability under Haines' regime. When she'd finished compiling the report, she typed "Conclusions and recommendations" in bold and stared at it. She had to find a tactful way to frame Lukas' suggestion that the good parts of Haines' network be revived without the illegal activities. She knew how conservative the police could be so she knew it would be a hard sell. As an organisation they were far more likely to distance themselves from anything that had the taint of corruption. On the other hand, it made perfect sense – the criminals and dealers would like nothing more than to get the incomers from County Lines out of their town. She started typing, using as many current management phrases as she could. She talked of cultivating CHIS from all strata of society. While she was crafting the report, she kept in mind that Suse would see the report and pass it on to the inspector. She also had to take care with the wording so that if Suse wanted to take the credit she'd have a hard job editing out Emma's involvement. She wished it wasn't necessary, but there it was. In an ideal world they'd be working together to advance in the police, but that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

When the report was all packaged up and sent across to Suse she called up the Companies House website. Lukas' basic idea of restarting the information network intrigued her. It was worth finding out who was running King Kabs now, to see if the idea had any merit.

Unsurprisingly, following their deaths, both Billy King and Sean Astbury had been removed as directors. Presumably the accountants and solicitors dealt with that after their deaths. But there was a third name, Thomas Quinn, who had also resigned his position as director. There was one new name on the list – Marnie King.

She cast her mind back to the barbecue earlier in the summer and recalled the image of a large woman, in every sense of the word. She had colourful clothes, lots of jewellery and long dark curly hair. A big personality, but she hadn't struck Emma as an astute business woman. Maybe appearances were deceptive.

Emma had never learned about the nuts and bolts of how the relationship between Billy King and Rob Haines had worked. Did Billy have an open door policy with his drivers, collate the information and pass it on to Rob? Or were individual drivers assigned out to members of CID as informants? There was obviously a close relationship between Rob and Billy, but with Rob's mental health still obviously quite shaky, asking him about a recently deceased friend was hardly a good idea.

The other side of the equation was Marnie King. Had she been put onto the paperwork in name only to let accountants run the company? Or was she more hands on? And if she was, how involved was she with the illegal side of the business? Emma would have to think hard about the correct approach to take. She couldn't contact a grieving widow and ask about how her dead husband had paid corrupt officers.