To Kill For Read online

  ‘It’s fake,’ I said.

  He just smiled.

  So, two DIs and a Detective Super. For Paget? That didn’t work. I threw the wallet back to him.

  ‘I’m putting a lot of faith in you by showing you that,’ he said. ‘Now I want something from you. Why are you after Paget?’

  I had to give him something, but I didn’t want to tell him about Brenda. I didn’t want him that close to me.

  ‘I knew a girl once,’ I said. ‘A small girl. She was African. Paget used her.’

  ‘He used a lot of people,’ Bradley said.

  ‘And Marriot?’ Compton said. The bastard was ahead of me.

  ‘Who?’

  He smiled. The others smiled.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Bradley said.

  ‘Frank Marriot,’ Compton said. ‘I think you’ve heard of him.’

  I had the feeling they knew everything about me.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Marriot,’ Hayward said. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Know how he died?’ Compton said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Slowly, I hear,’ Bradley said. ‘Gut-shot.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘You have anything to do with that?’

  ‘Why would I tell you?’

  ‘We got intel that it was some dispute with an Albanian gang. That they’d got word that Marriot had fucked them over some smack deal.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Bradley snorted. Compton glanced at him.

  ‘That never sat right with us,’ Compton said, looking back at me. ‘Not their style.’

  ‘No.’

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees.

  ‘You knew Marriot, didn’t you?’

  He waited for me to confess everything. When I didn’t, he smiled and sat back.

  ‘Not that I care,’ he said. ‘They can wipe themselves out as much as they want, as far as I’m concerned.’

  While they’d been tag-teaming me with their questions, I’d remembered something Tina had told me. When I’d questioned her, she’d told me that she didn’t know anything about Hayward, except she’d said that he was a friend of Glazer’s. Not Paget’s.

  The desire, the need to destroy Paget was in my blood. It had infected me, clogged my mind, choked me, blinded me to everything else. And now, looking at these three, listening to their vague answers, watching them skirt around, I knew I’d been wrong.

  Compton talked for a bit, but I wasn’t listening. I kept thinking, why did he mention Glazer? And then I knew, and realized what a fucking fool I’d been. Yes, I had been blind to everything except getting Paget. Once I took him out of the mix, things made more sense.

  ‘It’s not Paget,’ I said. ‘It’s Glazer. That’s who you’re after.’

  Compton flicked his eyes over at the others and I knew I was right.

  ‘What do you know about Glazer?’ Bradley said.

  ‘Where is he?’ Hayward said.

  They’d picked up where they’d left off, but now they weren’t fucking about. Well, I’d taken their combinations all I was going to.

  Now it was my turn.

  ‘Undo my feet and I’ll tell you,’ I said.

  Compton nodded to Bradley. Bradley mashed his cigarette in the saucer, stood, took his knife out and ambled over. He leaned down, sliced through the tape. I grabbed the back of his head and slammed it down as I brought my knee up. He was quick enough to move his face away. I felt cheekbone as I connected. He cried out, raising his hands in a reflex action. His blood spurted over my leg.

  Hayward said, ‘Fuck.’

  He was struggling to get my Makarov out of his waistband.

  I ripped Bradley’s jacket open, reached in under his left shoulder and tore out his gun. I jumped up, shoved my hands in Bradley’s armpits, lifted him up and threw him at Hayward. Bradley flew, sprawling, onto Hayward, who gurgled a cry. The two of them crashed onto the wooden seats.

  All this time, Compton had stayed where he was. His face had gone white, his eyes wide. He stared at Hayward and Bradley. I walked over to where Hayward was curled up, crying in pain, blood seeping through the bandage around his shoulder. I pulled my Makarov from his waistband. He looked up at me and recoiled, raising his good arm to defend his face. Bradley was almost out cold. He stirred a bit and murmured.

  Bradley had been carrying a short-barrelled .357 Smith and Wesson revolver. I opened the chamber and let the cartridges fall to the ground. Then I checked my Makarov.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Compton said, still staring at the other two. ‘Why the hell did you do that?’

  ‘I wanted my gun back.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Yeah. Now tell me what the fuck is going on.’

  He looked at me, his eyes fierce.

  ‘What are you going to do if I don’t? Kill us all?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He shifted in his seat.

  ‘You’re not that stupid.’

  ‘I might be that mad.’

  The anger in his eyes lifted. He shook his head slowly.

  ‘No you’re not.’

  I put the Makarov in my jacket pocket. Bradley moved groggily and hefted himself up onto his hands and knees. Hayward wasn’t making such a noise now. He was curled up still, holding his shoulder.

  ‘I’m going to get these two seen to,’ Compton said.

  It was as much a question as anything. He wanted to see what I’d do. I shrugged. He got up and went over to his men. Bradley waved him away and sat back on his ankles. He shook his head to clear it. There was a gash under his right eye. He wiped some blood off with his sleeve.

  ‘I’m alright,’ he said.

  Compton knelt by Hayward. The bandage was soaked through now.

  ‘He needs stitches,’ Compton said. ‘They both do.’

  ‘I know someone,’ I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It took me a half hour to get Browne out of his drunkenness. He was still bleary, but he could work okay. He complained for an hour, but I think he was glad to be doing something instead of brooding.

  ‘I suppose this is your doing,’ he said to me when he saw the men laid out in his lounge.

  He went to work quickly on Hayward, stitching him back together again. Then he took a look at Bradley and put a few stitches in his face.

  I wanted to clear my head a bit. There was a lump at the base of my skull where Hayward had bashed me. I didn’t tell Browne about it. I didn’t want him fussing. I told him I was going to lie down.

  ‘They’re law,’ I said to him. ‘Don’t tell them anything.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  I stared up into the darkness and let my mind clear, trying to work things out.

  Everything went back to Brenda. Everything circled her, like those crows, flying around screaming, looking for carrion to feed on.

  And these coppers; why were they interested in Glazer and not Paget? Surely Paget was the greater catch. He was involved in shit up to his neck. He was well known. Glazer? Nobody had heard of him. And Operation Elena was about people smuggling, using children. Paget had his hands dirty there. But Glazer…

  When I went back into Browne’s lounge, everyone was watching TV. On the coffee table were empty plates and mugs, a pack of cigarettes, a couple of half-full ashtrays and a lighter. The room was foggy with cigarette smoke. I thought I’d been gone thirty minutes. From the look of things, it was more like three, four hours.

  Nobody was talking. Bradley and Hayward were on the sofa. They glared at me, but I got no lip from them so I guessed Compton had told them to shut it. Browne was in his armchair, Compton in the other one. Browne was asleep. I nudged him and he blinked his eyes open. He looked around at the others.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Now I remember.’

  He stood with an effort and told us all he was going to bed. He shuffled off.

  Compton hadn’t taken his eyes off the TV. There was some film on. Some clean-faced k
id was running around with a gun too big for him. I sat down where Browne had been.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Compton said.

  ‘Fine.’

  Now he looked at me.

  ‘What say we start again?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Compton flicked a look at Hayward and Bradley.

  ‘Can I have my gun back?’ Bradley said.

  I’d left my jacket in the bedroom. I went and grabbed it and took it back to the lounge. Bradley held out his hand. I took his Smith and Wesson and my Makarov and put them on the coffee table. Compton looked at the weapons and nodded.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now maybe we’ll get somewhere. We’ve all made mistakes. You’ve made a few. You really shouldn’t have gone to Del’s house like that, not armed, not with his wife there. And we, well, we underestimated you.’

  If Compton thought I was going to clap him on the back and shake hands all round, he was wrong. He shifted in his seat.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ he said. ‘Your doctor friend. He is a doctor, isn’t he?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Well, he’s a good man.’

  Bradley leaned forward. I thought he might go for his gun, but he took a cigarette from the packet and the lighter. He lit up and leaned back and blew smoke rings.

  I still had the feeling that I was being played, used. Bradley blowing smoke rings, Compton making small talk; it was too casual, too false. I knew the law, knew how their minds worked. I didn’t trust them.

  Besides, things still didn’t make sense. Something gnawed at the back of my head, something about this lot, about Paget and Glazer, about their interest. They were too senior to be bothered with vice, surely. And I still didn’t get the secrecy thing, why they’d had to keep their activities quiet from the London law.

  ‘He told us about the girl,’ Compton said. ‘Kid? That was her name?’

  ‘Kindness.’

  ‘Right. Anyway he told us about her. Why did he do that, do you think?’

  ‘He was drunk.’

  ‘Maybe, but he told us anyway, and I believed what he said. He said you rescued her from Marriot, that you shot the place up just to get her.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Bradley said. ‘We know about the robbery on Cole’s casino. We know that Beckett was behind it and that Marriot and Paget were behind a double-cross and scalped the money off him. Cole hired you to get the money, didn’t he? Eh?’

  Compton put an innocent expression on his face.

  ‘That true, Joe?’

  ‘You went after Beckett first.’ This from Hayward. ‘We know Beckett liked little girls. You knew it too so you used the girl to get you in and then you killed him and Walsh and Jensen. But they didn’t have the money. Marriot had it, so you went after him. That’s why you wrecked his club. That’s why you killed him.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Bradley said, ‘Did you use her, Joe? That little girl. Was she your way in?’

  Compton shook his head at his two men. He looked at me.

  ‘I don’t think he used the girl,’ he said. ‘I think she was just caught up in the middle of it.’

  I said, ‘Was she?’

  They’d figured it wrong, but they were close. They didn’t have me for the original robbery and they didn’t know that Marriot had used Kid’s junky sister to force her to get to Beckett and open the door to let Paget in. They didn’t know Paget wiped out Beckett and his crew and took the money back to Marriot. Or maybe they knew everything and were just fucking with me.

  We were fencing with each other again, and I was tired of it all. They’d shown they knew a lot of stuff about Marriot and Paget, and me, and it was more than I wanted them to know. Now I was going to have to do a bit of figuring myself. I said, ‘Anything you got on Cole or Beckett or Marriot, Hayward must’ve learned from Paget. You know shit, which means Hayward wasn’t with Paget that long or wasn’t close enough to him.’

  I looked at Hayward.

  ‘Right?’

  Hayward looked at Compton who frowned.

  ‘Some of what you say is true. Del here picked up some of it from Glazer, yes. The rest we’ve pieced together. But it’s true, Hayward was with Glazer and only recently hooked up with Paget, probably when Paget was in trouble. So, Hayward was connected to Glazer, and he’s—’

  And then I had it, and I felt a fool not to have seen it before. It all fell into place, it clicked.

  ‘He’s a fucking copper,’ I said.

  It was like I’d pulled my gun. They went still, not breathing, not looking at each other. Bradley’s cigarette was halfway to his mouth. Hayward had gone rigid. Nobody said anything.

  I was right.

  ‘Glazer’s one of you.’

  Compton had recovered enough to say, in a bored voice, ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘If you’re not bent, it’s the only thing that makes sense.’

  ‘We’re not fucking bent,’ Hayward said. ‘Can’t you get that in your thick head?’

  ‘Then Glazer’s a copper.’

  ‘I say again,’ said Compton, ‘what makes you say that?’

  ‘A Detective Super and two DIs after one man? Bollocks. Unless that man’s bad for your lot. He must have clout too. That’s why you can’t trust the local law. That’s why Hayward had no panic button, which he would’ve done if you thought I might come for him. It’s why you put Hayward in a hospital in Cambridge. You must have called on some favour from someone you knew there, but you couldn’t tell them the truth, which is why their coppers there weren’t armed.’

  Compton chewed his lower lip.

  ‘You’re guessing.’

  ‘You want facts?’ I pointed to Hayward. ‘He was a copper at Barnet. A DC. He had an affair that went sour, got a transfer to a vice squad south of the river, made Detective Sergeant a couple of years after that, then Inspector.’

  I looked at Hayward. He stared at me, his lips tight. When he glanced at Compton he looked like he was seeking help.

  ‘Okay,’ Bradley said, blowing smoke out, ‘so you know a bit about Del’s background. So what?’

  ‘I know more than that. Elena was a special operation, a vice unit targeting immigration crime. I remember it. Was Glazer involved in that? He must have been.’

  I was guessing now, but from the stony looks on their faces I knew I was right. Now things were fitting into place. I thought about it, about how it might’ve worked. I said, ‘Glazer was bent. He got in with Paget and Marriot, probably taking pay-offs. The Elena thing was years ago. You lot can’t be part of that still, so you must be investigating it.’

  There was no reaction there, and I thought maybe I had it wrong after all. Unless…

  ‘Unless you weren’t investigating the running of operation Elena specifically. Unless you were investigating Glazer right from the start.’

  And then I saw how it fit. I had to be right. I said, ‘You pulled Hayward from his vice unit and placed him with Glazer’s squad to try and get something on him for the Elena investigation. That makes sense. If Glazer was bent, he’d be savvy about men joining his team. You used Hayward because he was already a vice cop. It was natural for him to go to another vice unit. How am I doing?’

  Bradley stared at me through cigarette smoke. Hayward looked at the floor miserably. Compton, though, seemed to be enjoying himself. He was leaning back in his seat with his left ankle on his right knee. He brushed his moustache with his fingers.

  ‘Or maybe you recruited Hayward after he’d already been posted to Glazer,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Compton smiled, but this time it was a grim smile, his eyes were hooded, a muscle twitched in his jaw.

  ‘We really did underestimate you. How did you reach these conclusions?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It matters a hell of a lot if other people know.’

  ‘They don’t.’

  ‘So you worked it out? All by yourself.’


  ‘Like you said, when I see a person, I think they’ve got an angle, they’re double-crossing. You lot are no different.’

  ‘You think we’re double-crossing you?’

  ‘I might as well.’

  ‘Your lack of faith in the police force of this country is disappointing.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Well, we could go on like this all night. What you know, what we know, if this, if that. What I’d like to talk about is you, Joe, and us. Or, more specifically, what you can do to help us.’

  ‘What do you need me for?’

  ‘Well, now that DI Hayward is otherwise incapacitated – thanks, I might mention, to you – we’ve lost contact with Glazer and Paget. Maybe you can help us there?’

  ‘If I knew where they were, I wouldn’t have gone to Hayward’s.’

  ‘That makes sense. Still, you might know something, or you might learn something.’

  ‘You want me to work for you?’

  ‘We want you to cooperate.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Tell us what you know.’

  ‘I don’t know anything.’

  Bradley said, ‘We’ve made guesses about your involvement with Marriot and Paget and Cole and all that, but I happen to think we’re not far off the mark and some of the people we know would be very interested to hear what we’ve come up with.’

  ‘You’d have the serious squad coming out of your arse,’ Hayward said.

  ‘I don’t care about Glazer. You can have him. I want Paget.’

  ‘You know that we’re police officers,’ Compton said, ‘and that legally we cannot be a party to the commission of a crime, or to the conspiracy to commit thereof, et cetera. You know all that, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Bradley sucked some smoke down and blew it at the ceiling.

  ‘He only wants to talk to Paget, don’t you Joe?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, that’s alright, then,’ Compton said. ‘As long as we understand each other.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Tell me about Glazer.’

  ‘We can’t tell you too much, you must accept that.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s smart. And dangerous. What else do you want to know?’

  ‘What’s his rank?’

  ‘Detective Super.’