NINE

Fred and Meg Bowden’s house was a white-painted Victorian building standing back from a tree-lined road on the outskirts of Tavistock. As Daniel parked the Merc on a tarmac drive bordered with ornamental brick edging, an outside light came on, illuminating flowerbeds stuffed with shrubs, drifts of snowdrops and clumps of early-flowering daffodils. Someone was a keen gardener, and somehow he couldn’t imagine it being Fred, although appearances could be deceptive: he’d once known a tough duty sergeant who liked nothing better than a spot of knitting for relaxation.

The front door opened as Daniel approached and he was met by a slim, fiftyish lady in faded jeans, a beaded silk top and an ankle-length purple mohair cardigan. She wore her long, salt and pepper hair in a loose knot from which wisps had escaped to hang around her face, and could have been no more than 5 feet 2 in her bare feet, which was how she was at that moment.

‘Daniel? Hi, I’m Meg,’ she said and leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

If Daniel was a little taken aback by this familiarity, at least it boded well for his job security. It was hardly the welcome you would expect from the boss’s wife if you were on the point of being sacked. Come to that, it was hardly the welcome you expected from the boss’s wife full stop – not on a first meeting, anyway.

‘Come on in. Fred’s in the kitchen, cooking. We’re eating late tonight. You’ll have some supper with us, won’t you? Or have you eaten?’

‘No, I haven’t. I’d like that. Thanks.’ Things were definitely looking up, but if he wasn’t being dismissed, why was he here?

‘Come in, then. How’s Taz?’

‘He’s doing well, thank you. He’s still at the vet’s under observation because of his head injury, but he should be able to come home tomorrow, all being well.’ Daniel shut the door behind him and followed Meg down the hallway towards the kitchen, where an ageing black cocker spaniel lay across the doorway. It raised its grey eyebrows enquiringly but made no move to vacate its position. Meg stepped over it without breaking step, but Daniel hesitated.

‘Oh, I’m sorry about Mosely. It’s his favourite place to sleep. I think it’s because he can see all the comings and goings from there. He’s a bit deaf, you see. Just step over him, he won’t mind.’

The kitchen wasn’t particularly large but was fitted out with cream-painted cupboards that stretched from the floor almost to the lofty ceiling. Worktops were of stained timber, the sink an old-style Belfast one, and a bottle-green Rayburn held pride of place under a brick arch on one wall. Fred stood in front of this, stirring the ingredients of a large stockpot with a wooden spoon; the combination of a blue and white striped apron, earring and razor-cut hair giving him a strangely Gallic look. An enticing aroma of curry pervaded the air.

‘Hi, Daniel. How’s Taz?’ Fred said, looking over his shoulder.

Daniel repeated his report.

‘That’s good news. But what about you? You look a bit rough yourself.’ He pointed the spoon at Daniel’s bandaged hand. ‘Was that from last night too?’

‘Yeah, but it’s nothing much. Listen, thanks for standing in for me today; that was a great relief.’

Fred slanted a look at him. ‘I didn’t think you’d turn up anyway with your partner at death’s door, so to speak. I was just getting in first, keeping the illusion of authority.’

‘Well, no, I wouldn’t have,’ Daniel admitted, noting Bowden’s use of the word ‘partner’. ‘But thanks anyway.’

‘Well, the rice is about ready,’ Fred said, lifting the lid on another saucepan. ‘Where’s Tom got to, I wonder?’

‘I’ll lay the table. I’m sure he’ll be here in a minute. He said he’d be finishing work at six when I spoke to him earlier, so unless something’s come up . . .’

Daniel had no idea who the absent Tom was but supposed he would find out shortly. He wasn’t left in the dark for long.

‘Would you like a beer, Daniel?’ Fred asked, going to the fridge as Meg disappeared with a handful of cutlery. ‘Tom’s our eldest son. We don’t see him very often, but he pops in now and then for a spot of good home cooking.’

‘Oh, then you’d probably rather I wasn’t here. Thanks,’ he added, accepting a bottle of real ale.

‘No, you’re all right. I budgeted for the both of you. Do you need a glass with that?’

‘Of course he does!’ Meg came back in. ‘Don’t be such a philistine. And take the top off for him too. He can’t do it with a bad hand.’

Daniel’s protests were interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the front door.

‘Ah, there he is,’ Meg announced.

Moments later there was a rush of cold air and a man’s deep voice called out in greeting.

Daniel shifted his position so he could get a good look at the newcomer’s approach, and saw a well-built man, perhaps a few years older than himself, with very short, greying brown hair. There would have been no doubting his relationship to Fred, even if Daniel hadn’t been told. Apart from being slightly taller, he was a carbon copy of his father, with the same intrinsic toughness that needed no attitude to back it up. Here was a man you just knew you shouldn’t mess with.

Before Tom even reached the kitchen, greeting the dog and then stepping over it as a matter of course, as his mother had, Daniel had readjusted his mindset towards the rest of the evening. Unless he was very much mistaken, Fred Bowden’s son was a police officer.

At least that explained the sudden and unheralded dinner invitation, Daniel thought as introductions were made. He was pleased to have solved that mystery. Even with the edited version of events that Daniel had given him, Fred had apparently decided that enough was enough.

On the face of it, Tom Bowden could be a godsend, especially if he was senior enough to have any clout in whichever station he hailed from, but one major hurdle remained: how would he react when he pulled Daniel’s record at the Bristol Met?

‘You go on in with your beers. I’m just going to put some veg on,’ Meg said, shepherding them all towards the door. ‘I can’t work round you lot. This kitchen isn’t big enough.’

Obediently the three men moved into the dining room, another high-ceilinged room, this time decorated with a theme of deep red and gold and dominated by a big, dark oak table with a gothic candelabra as its centrepiece. Daniel fancied he could see Meg’s hand at work in the slightly Bohemian décor.

As he followed the others, Daniel allowed himself a secret smile, suspecting that this was to be the moment for the unveiling. Some perverse facet of his nature prompted him to take the initiative and let Tom know he was rumbled.

‘So, which station are you from?’ he asked casually, as if the subject had already been broached.

There was a noticeable pause and then Tom looked at his father. ‘You’ve told him?’

‘I haven’t said a word,’ Fred replied. ‘He didn’t even know you were coming until five minutes ago. It must’ve been your big flat feet that gave the game away.’

Tom held out his hand towards Daniel. ‘DS Tom Bowden, Molton CID. How did you guess?’

Daniel shook the hand, shrugging. ‘I don’t know, really. Just knew.’

‘Well, I can’t say you’ve done wonders for my undercover confidence,’ Tom remarked ruefully. ‘And you are former PC Daniel Whelan of the Bristol Met and more recently of Taunton nick, but I can’t claim any great intuition, just plain old-fashioned record-checking.’

It was Daniel’s turn to look at Fred.

‘I’m sensing a set-up, here. How long have you known?’

‘Since the start, when you turned up for the job. You didn’t really think I took your rather vague CV at face value, did you?’

‘I did think you were a bit casual,’ Daniel admitted.

‘I asked Tom to check you out. I’ve had a couple of bad experiences with drivers in the past, so I don’t take any chances these days. Can’t afford to.’

‘In that case – if Tom did his homework properly – I’m surprised you took me on.’

‘Well, I don’t pretend to know exactly what went on at the Met,’ Tom said. ‘In general, your ex-colleagues weren’t over keen to talk. But I didn’t find anything that made you a risk as a potential employee for Dad. Did I miss something?’

Daniel smiled faintly. ‘Would I tell you if you had?’

Tom took a couple of swallows of his beer. ‘I did speak to DCI Paxton,’ he said then.

‘And . . . ?’ Daniel said warily.

‘He said you and he hadn’t always seen eye to eye but he had no complaints. Without giving details, he implied that you’d had something of a nervous breakdown and that your colleagues had lost confidence in you. He said that that was why he’d assigned you a temporary desk job. He seemed genuinely disappointed that you’d decided to call it a day.’

‘Yeah, that’d be right!’

‘I don’t know of anything against Paxton and he’s got a bloody good record for getting the job done,’ Tom stated calmly, walking round the dining table and sitting in one of the chairs on the other side. ‘But personally, I don’t like the man and I don’t trust him any further than I could spit him.’

Daniel glanced across, a glimmer of hope in his heart for the first time in a long while.

‘So, do you want to tell us your side of the story?’ Tom invited, waving a hand at the chair opposite.

Scanning the man’s face, Daniel could see nothing except an apparent honest interest, and found that he did very much want to set the record straight, if only to this limited audience.

He stepped forward and pulled out a chair to sit on, standing his beer on a mat on the table.

‘It started a couple of years ago, when I was still in the Dog Unit,’ he said, staring at the beer glass, which he was turning with his fingers. ‘There was a major drugs bust going down at a warehouse on the waterfront – it was the culmination of a big operation – and they wanted a couple of dogs on standby just in case anyone slipped the net.’

He glanced at Tom, who nodded. It was a normal precaution.

‘So I was there with Taz, and as it happened, we were called in. It seems there was a tip-off at the last minute and before the lads could even take up their positions the suspects were legging it in all directions. It was chaos. Taz and I were in one of the squad cars tailing two of the main suspects who’d made off in a vehicle. Anyway, they crashed a couple of miles down the road, split up and made a run for it. The lads caught one of them pretty quickly, but the other one had it away on foot across country, carrying a rucksack. The chopper was tied up helping the boys on the ground locate a couple of runners back at the waterfront, so we were on. Taz picked up a good scent and set off at a hell of a lick – completely ran the legs off the sarge who was following me.’ Daniel paused reflectively. ‘Mind you, he was pretty soft – been sitting behind the wheel too long.

‘Anyway, we’d been tracking the suspect for a couple of miles when Taz suddenly stopped – bang – and did a ninety-degree left. Our runner had realized we were getting close and ditched the rucksack. He’d lobbed it into the bushes and that’s what Taz had found. Once I realized what had happened, I put him back on the scent and we found matey up a tree, a hundred yards or so further on. I radioed my position, but he was so scared of the dog he refused to come down until back-up arrived, so I was able to leave the formalities to them. All in all, in spite of the tip-off, the waterfront operation had been a huge success and everyone was on a high. Much back-patting all round.’ He paused and looked up to find Tom watching him closely.

‘And?’

‘Well, I took a quick look in that rucksack when I pulled it out of the undergrowth, and I’d say there was easily a couple of kilos of smack inside. The thing is, I found out later that when it was checked in at the station, there was only a fraction of that.’

Tom’s brows drew down. ‘You couldn’t have been mistaken? Are you sure there wasn’t anything else in the rucksack that could have made it feel heavier?’

‘Nothing,’ Daniel stated with absolute conviction. ‘Somewhere between the collar and the evidence room, the major part of the haul went walkies.’

‘And did you have any idea who might have taken it?’ That was Fred.

Daniel shook his head. ‘It could have been any one of a number of people. My shift was already over, and as I didn’t actually make the arrest, I didn’t go back to the station – just picked up my car and went home.’

‘And you think it was one of your colleagues?’ Fred again.

‘It had to be, unless someone was criminally careless.’

‘I’m afraid it’s not unheard of,’ Tom told his father. ‘Officers supplementing their income with a bit of, shall we say, recycling?’

‘You mean they sell it back to the dealers?’

‘Yeah, or wherever,’ he confirmed resignedly. ‘They’re not short of contacts.’

‘They’re no better than the dealers they’re arresting,’ Daniel said bitterly. ‘Worse, really. Hiding behind their badges. One thing’s for sure – someone made a pretty penny. The smack that did make it back was a hundred per cent pure. The jokers at the warehouse would have cut it and sold it on to the dealers.’

‘Cut it?’ Fred asked.

‘Yeah, mixed it with something else to bulk it out.’

‘What do they mix it with?’ he wanted to know, and Tom answered.

‘Powdered milk, sugar, baking soda, soap powder, talc, sink cleaners, detergent – you name it, basically. Any white powder; they aren’t bothered. There was a case, years ago, where the Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards almost died when someone cut his dope with strychnine.’

‘Strychnine?’ Fred was horrified. ‘But that’s a poison!’

‘So is heroin,’ Tom said grimly. ‘But you wouldn’t really want to inject any of those fillers into your bloodstream. They’ll probably all kill you in the end if the heroin doesn’t.’

Fred Bowden shook his head in disgust. ‘And the cops are selling it back to the dealers,’ he said. ‘Christ! These are the people we pay to uphold the law.’

‘So, what did you do about it?’ Tom asked Daniel, coming back to the main thrust of the tale.

‘I looked up my old sergeant, Sid Dyer, and had a word with him. He’s not at the Met any more – he’s community liaison officer for another nick – but I called him up and we went out for a drink. He was my mentor when I joined up. I was just eighteen then. He took me in hand and I thought the sun shone out of his arse.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He basically advised me to look the other way. “Don’t rock the boat. Nobody’ll thank you for it,” he said. “All you’ll do is make trouble for yourself.” I wasn’t completely surprised, but I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed. You see, when I’d worked with him, Sid had always been so straight, so principled. I hadn’t seen him for a while and he’d changed. It was like life and the job had finally worn him down. He seemed tired, more cynical. He told me he was looking forward to his retirement.’

‘I take it you didn’t follow his advice,’ Fred observed.

‘I should’ve,’ Daniel replied with feeling. ‘I did think about it. Perhaps if I had, I’d still have a marriage, a career and a pension to look forward to. But I couldn’t get away from the fact that keeping quiet would make me just as guilty as they were. I mean, it wasn’t just a spot of petty pilfering. Heroin ruins lives – not just the users’ but their families’, and the lives of the people they mug and steal from in order to feed their habit. One of the rehab support workers I know calls it “powdered misery”.’ He looked at Tom, hoping he understood. ‘I didn’t want to get involved, but I felt I couldn’t go on doing my job if I didn’t. I just wished to God I’d never found out.’

‘So who did you tell?’

Tom’s face was impassive, and Daniel had a moment’s fantasy that he was in fact Paxton’s mole, that he would run to him and repeat everything. But that was ridiculous – he was no threat to Paxton now; the man had got what he wanted when he’d succeeded in forcing Daniel to throw in his career.

‘Well, just before we parted, Sid said that if I did go ahead and blow the whistle, I should go high, so I did.’ Daniel paused, taking a sip of his beer. ‘But I still didn’t go high enough. The DCI I chose to tell was full of praise for what he called my dedication to duty. He told me I’d definitely done the right thing in going to him and that I could safely leave it in his hands. It would be treated with the utmost urgency, he said. I left his office feeling satisfied that I’d made the right decision, and was prepared to go back to my unit and get on with my job. I didn’t know I’d just thrown away any chance of a long and successful career.’ He paused, his jaw tightening as he recalled the consequences of his action. The moral high ground had proven to be a cold and windswept place. ‘Three days later, Taz injured himself and was put on indefinite convalescence. Two days after that, my drugs dog, Bella, was reassigned and I was pulled from the Dog Unit and put back on to regular duties.’

‘And what reason were you given?’ Tom wanted to know.

‘Apparently, my work wasn’t satisfactory,’ Daniel said lightly. ‘I was told there’d been several complaints, but unsurprisingly, nobody would give me any details.’

There was a moment’s silence, during which the door to the kitchen opened and Meg appeared, carrying the large stockpot between two oven-gloved hands. Fred put down his beer glass and hurried to take it from her.

Daniel was grateful for the interruption. There was more to the story of his downfall, but some of it was still way too raw to let out of the safe padded cells of his mind.

Conversation during the meal was of an everyday nature and it wasn’t until they settled down in the Bowdens’ shabbily comfortable lounge with cups of fresh coffee and a bowl of broken mint chocolate that Tom returned to criminal matters, asking Daniel to tell him everything he knew about the runaway girl.

‘Dad’s told me what he knows, but it’s a bit sketchy. I’m assuming there’s a fair bit more to it,’ he said, rubbing his foot up and down the belly of the spaniel, who had followed them in and now lay supine at his feet.

‘There is.’ Daniel hesitated. ‘I promised not to tell, but I think it’s got beyond that now. If nothing else, this little incident?’ he held up his bandaged hand – ‘proves that.’

Daniel gave the Bowdens the facts with as much detail as he felt was necessary. They listened in silence, apart from the odd question from Tom, who made copious notes in his pocketbook, and a small sound of disgust from Meg when she heard how Patrescu and Macek had tricked Katya and her sister into coming to the UK and of the methods they employed to force them to stay.

When Daniel came to the end of his tale, outlining his fight with Macek the previous night, she exclaimed in horror.

‘My God! He was actually going to kill you?’

‘Yeah, and he very nearly did. I can’t believe I was so stupid as to fall for that old trick. I hadn’t really considered that they’d come gunning for me – though why not I can’t imagine. It’s quite possible that I got caught on one of their CCTV cameras at the house, but even if I didn’t, they were bound to put two and two together sooner or later. I mean, Katya doesn’t know anyone in this country – who else would be trying to help her?’

‘Pretty easy to follow you in that lorry of mine too,’ Fred commented.

‘Yeah, and the worst thing is, I think he might have been there a couple of nights before, but he got a taste of the dog that time, so he worked out a way to separate us, and I played along like a complete novice.’

‘We all make mistakes from time to time,’ Tom observed. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. But you’re right – this has gone far enough. It may take a day or two, but I can confidently predict that Mr Yousef Patrescu will be getting a rather unpleasant surprise before he’s very much older.’

‘And it can be done without involving Yelverton?’

‘I don’t see why not. There’ll no doubt be some friction about it when they find out, but we can live with that, especially if we can turn up some evidence of Naylor’s involvement. Now the girl, Katya, do you think she’s safe where she is, or should we bring her in?’

‘I think so.’ Daniel felt as though a huge weight were lifting from his shoulders. ‘If they knew where to find her, they’d have picked her up by now. I’m the only one who knows where she is, so if she keeps her head down and I stay away until it’s all over – so there’s no possible chance of leading anyone there – I can’t see any reason she should be in any danger. I’ll phone Hilary and warn her.’

‘Good.’ Tom closed his pocketbook. ‘I’ll set the wheels in motion, but don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a day or two. It all takes time, as you know.’

‘Patrescu made a big mistake when he called you to help find the girl,’ Meg said to Daniel, getting up to pour more coffee. ‘From his point of view, he couldn’t have picked a worse person. But it was Katya’s lucky day, that’s for sure.’

‘It certainly was,’ Tom agreed. ‘Unfortunately, there are thousands like her who aren’t so lucky.’

Fred cleared his throat. ‘I think—’

They were never to find out what he thought, for at that moment Daniel’s mobile started to ring.

The number wasn’t familiar to him and – after apologizing to his hosts – he stepped out into the hall to take the call.

‘Daniel?’ A woman’s voice, the accent vaguely familiar.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Sarah. At the vet’s.’

Daniel glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the lounge. It was almost eleven, and his heart started to thump heavily as an icy foreboding drained all the strength from his body.

As if from a distance, he heard himself say, in a surprisingly normal tone, ‘Hi, Sarah. Is anything wrong?’

‘I’m afraid there is. I’m sorry to ring you so late, but there’s a problem with Taz,’ she said, and suddenly Daniel couldn’t breathe.