Jo had no idea how she’d managed to arrive at Brighton Police Station in one piece. The drive was a blur and she knew working was a stupid thing to do, but if she spent another day in the silence of home imagining what purgatory Darren was going through, she’d go mad. He’d had two nights in that hellhole already. How would he survive a third?
As she expected, her trudge up the stairs to her office brought awkward stares and murmurings of ‘Morning, ma’am’ to which she just grunted replies. She’d brave one of her station walkabouts later but for now she needed to reacquaint herself with the normality of her office and hopefully empathy from Gary.
She’d almost reached her door when Fiona looked up from her phone call. The PA’s warm smile and wink reassured Jo that no one and nothing would be allowed to intrude on her return until her gatekeeper deemed the time was right. She smiled back and pushed the handle down. It was only then that she looked up and saw Gary deep in conversation with Bob and Scotty.
All but Gary stood up. 233
‘Oh do sit down,’ she mumbled.
‘Morning, Jo. Listen chaps, can we continue this later?’ said Gary. Scotty was the first one to gather up his iPad and head out. As he left, Bob was about to follow but as he walked past Jo she touched his shoulder.
‘Stay.’ She shut the door.
Before she could open her mouth, Gary said, ‘What are you doing back? Shouldn’t you be taking, you know, some time?’
‘What, with my family? Not sure I’m that welcome in Belmarsh.’
‘No, I mean … The boys.’
Jo sat down in the vacant chair, leaving Bob to retake her usual one.
‘I’m going mad at home. What were you lot plotting?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘What do you think?’
‘You tell her,’ said Gary. Jo detected a frostiness towards the DI.
She looked at Bob as he hesitated. ‘Well?’
Bob sighed then brought her up to speed, warts and all. He looked more contrite than she’d ever seen him and she now knew why Gary was so pissed off.
‘To sum up then, we had intelligence that drugs had been distributed and we did nothing. We heard of a city-wide lack of Synthopate and we did nothing. Then people started dying when the heroin hit the streets and still we did nothing. Is that about it?’
Gary chipped in. ‘I think that’s a little harsh. Bob had his reasons for not getting search warrants, but yes, we could have done a little more.’
It would have been so easy for Gary to throw Bob under a bus, but she was impressed he wasn’t shirking his part in this. She was sure he’d made his feelings very clear to the DI in private but now he was the buck-stop point.
Jo was starting to feel more like her old self already. ‘Let’s get back to basics. This Spanners fella. How do we know he’s not playing us? He wouldn’t be the first to ingratiate himself to us, would he? What do we actually know about him?’ 234
Bob started to give his background and the information he’d been feeding to Scotty, but she raised her hand. ‘I know all that but what’s driving him? He rocks up from nowhere and all of a sudden he’s spilling his guts to a sergeant he’s never met. He says he’s scared but, really?’
‘He did phone Scotty as soon as he finished the drops,’ said Gary, taking the underdog’s side now.
‘When he’d finished. Not when he started. Why would he do that? If you’re right then he’s deliberately distributed drugs to a gang of people who have just swerved double-digit jail time, and now we’ve got addicts dropping like conkers.’
‘Maybe he had no chance earlier …’
She cut Gary off. ‘He had a choice. He could have called us and we’d have looked after him. Sure, we wouldn’t have known where the drugs were going but at least we’d have had them and they wouldn’t be poisoning God knows how many people as we speak.’
‘In fairness,’ said Bob, ‘he didn’t know they were drugs and we still don’t. And even if they were, how do we know it was that batch that’s killing people?’
She hated doing this, but two of her closest allies had let her down and they needed to know. ‘How do we ever know there are drugs anywhere we look? We don’t. We gather intelligence and we make a judgement. He should have told us before he went all Santa Claus. He’s got blood on his hands.’
There was a silence that Jo was determined not to fill.
‘What are we going to do?’ Gary finally said.
So many colleagues, Gary included, had told her she was becoming a control freak, but here he was ducking responsibility. ‘Gary. I’m not being funny but surely you can work that out. What do we usually do with drug dealers?’
She could almost bite the atmosphere as it changed. Gary looked confused. Bob got it straight away.
‘Tell him, Bob.’ 235
‘Arrest him?’
‘There you go. Wasn’t that hard, was it? When you strip it all down, this Spanners fella has done the square root of bugger all for us.’
‘Now that’s hardly fair,’ said Gary.
‘Isn’t it? He’s given us the nod on a few uncorroborated pieces of gossip but that doesn’t trump wholesale drug distribution. He needs nicking and we need to do a proper job on him.’ She could see the panic rising in both men. No doubt they were totting up Scotty’s breaches of a barn-full of laws and regulations, not to mention turning a blind eye to countless petty crimes. The defence would have a field day and no doubt Spanners would walk, probably to his death. ‘Let me help you out. He knows more than he can tell us in this uncontrolled, borderline illegal way we are dealing with him at the moment. If we nick him, he’s ours. We can debrief him about the other night but also tap him up for other information too. No one’s to know.’
‘And then?’ said Gary.
Jo shrugged. ‘Maybe we charge him, maybe we don’t. But if we do, he’ll be safer on remand than out there.’
‘Safe on remand?’ blurted Gary until Bob glared at him. ‘I, er, I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry Jo, that was careless of me.’
Jo stood up, her hands trembling. ‘You don’t need to spell it out for me. I see it every waking hour, and that’s every fucking hour. He’s going through hell in there, just like Bob did.’ She turned briefly to the DI. ‘I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but life goes on and if Spanners is seen to be treated as the common criminal he is, that helps him and helps us. Believe it or not he would be safer inside, which is where he should be already, so stop faffing about and get him nicked.’ She turned back to Bob. ‘Get a team together and start building a case. These dead kids were loved by someone and they deserve justice.’ She opened the door. ‘Off you go. And don’t tell Scotty.’