No Time to Die_a thrilling CSI mystery Page 17

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I haven’t let you down, Slade,’ protested Jagger. ‘I’ve been here four months, and in all that time, have I ever let you down? We pulled off the cash-in-transit robbery, didn’t we? It went fine. I’ve done collection work for you, Tyler, haven’t I? I’ve never given anyone cause to think I’m not loyal.’ Everyone stared at him. ‘Oh, come on! I even ditched that whore and cleaned up the flat.’

  Slade looked away in thought. ‘Tea, Monty, please.’

  ‘Can I have one?’ Jagger asked.

  Monty looked at Slade, and Slade nodded. ‘And it’s an apartment!’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘I said shut it, boy.’

  ‘Only one I can think of is Wasp.’ Jagger said. ‘He wasn’t with us all day. We got everything ready, we did all the prep work, and he wasn’t around.’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Not at home,.’ Monty put two cups of tea on the table. ‘I checked earlier when you mentioned the computer thing.’

  ‘Wasp wouldn’t pull a fast one–’

  ‘Tyler. Wipe the SIM cards.’

  Tyler stared at Slade, the muscles in his cheeks throbbing. Then he removed all the cards from the phones, including Jagger’s, put them on a saucer and put them in the microwave oven. He pressed start and watched the lightning show for ten seconds. The oven bleeped. Done.

  ‘Did you see his body?’ Slade asked.

  Jagger nodded. ‘I got his phone and the comms equipment off him before the police showed up.’

  ‘You sure this black lad had no teeth?’ Monty asked.

  Jagger nodded. ‘Pikey got him in the side, he was screaming when he got in the taxi.’

  Monty and Slade both said, ‘Tymo.’

  ‘And if he’s been hit,’ Tyler slid the cards into the bin, ‘he’ll be with Gryz.’

  Slade nodded. ‘Tomorrow, we begin putting things right with Blake. Tyler, that’s your job, right?’ Tyler nodded. ‘Monty, you get some of the lads round, give ’em names, addresses and amounts; I want all them collections to go smoothly, on time, like we can absorb this shit no problem, right?’

  ‘Right, chief.’

  ‘But for now, we go get my money back.’

  Monty and Tyler nodded.

  ‘What about me?’ Jagger asked.

  ‘Get tooled up; you’re coming with us.’ And then Slade added, ‘We’ll get your leg fixed up while we’re there.’

  ‘How many shall I call?’

  ‘Half a dozen should do it.’

  25

  Queen’s Medical Practice was a fairly swish building considering the area it was in. It was a new, single-storey building in its own grounds with ample parking. Thigh-high bushes surrounded it on all sides, and splinted saplings in wire protection baskets were dotted around the car park. The whole building was alone, situated in a playing field off a side road in Middleton. Middleton was predominantly council housing, and old housing at that; populated more by youth than wisdom and considered a punishment rather than a gift by those who lived there.

  At this time in the morning, the medical centre ought to have been totally quiet; there should have been no lights on inside and no vehicles outside. Sometimes, dealers and pushers used the car park. But not tonight.

  Monty did a drive-by with Jagger in the back and Slade up front. Tyler and the rest of the crew waited in the truck a few hundred yards away.

  Jagger pointed and shouted, ‘That’s the fucking taxi!’

  ‘Better hope they came straight here. I want my cash back.’

  Two pole-mounted security lights fought a battle with the darkness, and their small victory illuminated the taxi. They shone on the blood-streaked hand prints that had run down from the top frame of the rear passenger door like a dying man’s tears and reflected off the driver’s spectacles each time he moved his head. From the slightly open back window, smoke plumed into the sky, and then the unseen occupant tossed out a cigarette end and then wound the window up. More blue smoke curled lazily from its exhaust as the taxi’s engine idled.

  An empty BMW blocked the entrance to the medical centre car park.

  At the side of the building, a lone man puffed on a cigarette; his head swivelled slowly as he watched their car go by.

  A second, unseen man stood around the back of the building having a piss. And apart from the small loss of blood from a head wound, that was the last time any bodily fluid would leave him until he hit the pathologist’s table the next day. There was no security light around this side; the bulb had blown weeks ago, and no one had bothered fixing it. But he’d stood out as a silhouette against the illuminated window of the doctor’s surgery.

  A drunken man staggered into the car park, arms outstretched as though he was afraid of walking into something. He stopped twenty yards short of the taxi; those inside, and the lone man beneath the security light, watched him. There was a click as solenoids locked the taxi’s doors.

  Two men readied themselves behind the bush just the other side of the taxi.

  The drunken man swivelled slightly, then doubled over and threw up before collapsing onto the wet tarmac. He stirred for a moment, then regained his feet and saw at last, it seemed, the taxi. He smiled and tried to wave, then staggered across towards it with vomit stringing from his chin. The man beneath the security lamp walked a few paces, hand reaching inside his jacket. The taxi window came down a few inches.

  ‘Hey, mate,’ slurred the drunk, ‘giz a lift to Morley, wouldya.’

  ‘Go away,’ said the driver.

  ‘Aw, go on. I got cash, man. I can pay ya.’

  ‘I said–’

  The drunk shouted, ‘Now!’

  Both side windows of the taxi imploded. The two occupants didn’t even manage to turn as two six-foot lengths of scaffolding pole shattered the side windows. One scaffolding pole glanced off the driver’s shoulder and smashed through his jaw, driving broken bone and torn flesh into his brain. The rear passenger’s left eye socket splintered under the second pole, and he was dead before his head smacked into the door to his left. The man reaching into his jacket by the security light, folded at the knees and then dropped forward onto his face; the rear of his skull had popped like a balloon and the scaffolding pole had punched through his brain like an apple corer.

  Tymo was in agony. The lucky hit from the dying man outside the Turkish tearoom had caught him just below the rib cage on his left side. He didn’t know if that was his liver area, or whether it had punctured a lung, or what. He wasn’t a medical man; and on top of that, he couldn’t think straight.

  Luckily, Nix was a thinking man, and he’d told the taxi driver – a man they all called Rahool, to come straight here to see the Doc. Nix had called ahead, got one of the guys to raise the Doc and meet them here along with another four men to guard the outside of the medical centre.

  There was still the thick end of forty grand inside the taxi, so it would need protecting.

  Tymo was a self-made man. Not a gang lord or a gang boss in the traditional sense of the word; he worked with his men on as many jobs as he could, got his hands dirty and bloody and never asked them to do anything he wouldn’t himself. If Tymo had applied himself as well in the outside world as he did in the underworld, he’d be a company CEO by now, no doubt. But he preferred this kind of life; living on the edge, they called it.

  The only problem with living on the edge, with getting your hands bloody, was the risk of ending up in places like this. He couldn’t go to hospital because the police would work out pretty quickly what had happened, and where it had happened. Game over. So, he had to rely on the medical expertise of a Polish doctor called Pawel Gryzbowski who was known locally as Dr Pawel, or in circles inhabited by people like Tymo, he was known as Doc or just plain Gryz.

  Gryz had given him morphine while he tried to stop the bleeding. Tymo was bleeding out quickly, and his face was that of a man struggling against the inevitable.

  Standing next to Tymo was Shack; a big man
with scars across his face, and he stared at Gryz with growing agitation.

  Another man, smaller, called Heiny, said, ‘Come on, Gryz, fix him up, man!’ He was never still, fidgeting, walking around the surgery, out into the waiting room, back into the surgery, peering out of the windows between the blinds, fretting. ‘Come on, Gryz,’ he said again.

  ‘Shut it,’ Shack said. ‘Gryz, can you fix him or not?’

  Gryz’s hair stuck out at weird angles; underneath the shirt he wore, he had on his pyjamas and on his feet were a pair of slippers that glistened from fresh drops of blood. Gryz worked on Tymo. He slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. He needs a hospital. He’s lost too much blood, and he’s likely to have a heart attack anytime soon.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘He’s bleeding inside, Shack, and I can’t stop it.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Sshhh.’ Heiny slid the blinds open again. ‘Did you hear that? I heard glass break, did you hear that?’

  ‘Go check it out,’ Shack growled, and Heiny flitted across the room and out of the door.

  Tymo opened his eyes and looked at Shack. ‘Get me to a hospital, man.’

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ Gryz said. ‘They can help quicker.’

  Shack took out his phone.

  Heiny made it into the waiting area, the receptionist’s desk in front of him and the exit door round to the left. He stopped, swallowed and took out his gun. He didn’t like this. It all seemed too quiet; where was Davis? He should have…

  Sitting in the waiting room was a man he recognised from earlier this evening. He had a black plastic bag tied around one of his legs. He also had a look of arrogance on his face, mixed with anger. ‘Payback time,’ he said.

  And then he remembered where he recognised the guy from.

  To his right, something moved quickly and before Heiny could raise his gun and turn, he hit the floor and his gun skittered across to the desk. Heiny coughed once and then the scaffolding pole finished him off.

  Monty picked up Heiny’s gun and together with Slade hobbling, he strode up towards the doctors’ surgeries, Jagger limping behind. In the lead, Tyler and one other man, Eton, stopped at the door. Inside, they could hear the clattering of stainless steel tools on stainless steel trays – it could have been a dining room.

  And then they heard, ‘Heiny?’

  Slade shoved past his men, ignored Monty’s hand trying to pull him back and marched straight into the room.

  ‘Shack,’ he said. ‘Good to see you again.’

  Shack had a phone to his ear, but when he saw Slade Crosby and several others filling the room, he simply put the phone away and looked straight at him. ‘He’s dying,’ he said. ‘I need to get him to a hospital.’

  ‘Why burden the NHS? Don’t you think they’re overworked as it is?’

  Tyler slid past Slade and walked calmly towards Shack, his hand out.

  Shack opened his jacket pocket and slid the gun from a small holster attached to his belt, picked it up between finger and thumb and just handed it over.

  Gryz took a step back, pulling off a pair of latex gloves. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Take your fight outside, this is–’

  ‘Doc, good to see you too. Now go fix my man up while Tymo and me work out our problems.’ He raised his eyebrows at the doctor’s impending protests, ‘There’s a good man, eh?’

  Jagger sat in a plastic chair and began untying the shredded bin bag. Gryz reached for more gloves, looking ever more harrowed.

  Monty turned to Eton. ‘Keep an eye out,’ he said, handing over Heiny’s gun.

  Slade approached the table, looked down at Tymo and saw the mess in his side. ‘Ooh,’ he hissed, ‘looks nasty does that.’ He came close to Tymo’s sweating face and whispered, ‘Does it hurt?’

  Tymo’s eyes flickered open.

  ‘Who told you?’ Slade asked. ‘Who told you we had a little job planned?’

  Tymo smiled, slid his eyes closed again.

  ‘Tell me, and I’ll let Shack ring for an ambulance.’

  ‘I…’

  Slade watched Tymo’s lips move slightly, leaned even closer.

  ‘A copper,’ he whispered, ‘name of…’

  ‘Go on, lad. What’s he called?’ Slade waited, and then asked, ‘Was it Phil Gibson? Or Dom Thompson? Maybe Jimmy Akhtar? Eh? Well who the fuck was it!’

  Tymo’s body tensed slightly for a moment, then relaxed utterly, as he finally breathed out. Unfortunately, sometimes living on the edge called for dying on the edge too.

  Slade looked at his face. Looked at Shack. Then back at Tymo. ‘Lad?’ he said. ‘Don’t you fucking die on me now!’ He slapped Tymo’s face, and there was no reaction. ‘I said answer me, you bastard.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Shack said.

  Slade pointed a finger and spat, ‘Don’t you fucking interrupt me.’ And he punched Tymo in the stomach, a barrelling blow that had no effect other than to expel more blood from the wound. ‘Bastard!’

  ‘Let’s go, chief.’

  Slade turned around quickly and pointed a gun right at Shack’s forehead.

  ‘Chief?’

  ‘Shut up, Monty.’ Slade smiled at Shack. ‘Do you know who told him about our job?’

  Shack said nothing. He merely looked past the gun into Slade’s narrowed eyes.

  ‘Last chance.’

  ‘He never mentioned them to me.’

  ‘What about those names? Recognise any of them?’

  Shack considered for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘No, Mr Crosby.’

  ‘They’re coppers, Shack. They worm their way into our groups, and they taint them; they gather information about them. Only these bastards are going one step further.’ He jerked the gun, and Shack’s eyes widened for just a moment. ‘These bastards are trying to take us all out. That’s a different ball game entirely. And we all need to work together on this to stop them.’ Slade paused. ‘Am I getting through your fucking thick skull?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Crosby.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Crosby,’ he mocked. ‘Is that all you can fucking say?’

  ‘If I hear of anything, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Remember today as the day I let you live. I saved your life, Shack, and you owe me.’

  They had to wait another fifteen minutes for the trench in Jagger’s calf to be cleaned and dressed. There was no skin left surrounding the wound to stitch to, Gryz had said, so he’d just have to keep it clean and apply new dressings frequently.

  When Jagger hobbled out of the surgery, he saw Shack dragging the bodies of his men out of the blaze from the security light, ready, he guessed, for a pickup truck to come and get them for disposal later. His own team, already in a pickup truck with a black holdall full of cash, waited for him to climb into Slade’s car before following them away.

  26

  It was late, and his body was crying out to rest. His mind, however, had other plans. He lay in the darkness, watching the faint slice of blue-white moonlight creeping around the gap between the curtains and the window frame. Ros was on his mind, and for the hundredth time in the two hours he’d lain there, he told himself to forget it, at least for tonight. Nothing he could do about it now, was there? May as well sleep and think on it tomorrow.

  Oh, okay.

  No chance.

  He punched the pillow and sat up, turned on the lamp and lit a cigarette. And then it hit him. It was almost something physical. Why she wanted him to come and work with her at MCU. All that talk she gave him about being sorry for not contacting him over the last two years was utter bollocks. Wait; that wasn’t entirely correct. She was sorry, he felt sure of it now, but ever since he had started working there, there was something wrong, some slight misalignment of the old Ros that betrayed her weak attempts at normality.

  And that’s what gave the game away.

  Eddie climbed out of bed, slid a pair of boxers on and went into the kitchen. Cigarette dangling from his mouth, he put the kettle on and searched for a teas
poon.

  She wanted him with her at MCU for protection. Not protection against anyone there per se, but she just wanted him close. She was under threat, and now he’d worked out who that threat was. This was the worst possible situation as far as Eddie was concerned. If the threat was someone at work, sorting it out wouldn’t be too difficult, because if Eddie couldn’t smooth things over with words, he was quite handy with fists, and either method would do so long as it got the desired result.

  But her problem was nowhere near work. Her problem was the bastard she slept with. That was why she was so desperately upset that day in McDonald’s when he knew, he knew, there was something she wasn’t telling him. She had been so upset because the timing was awful. She married this Brian fella because she was afraid of being a spinster, she didn’t want to be alone – understandable, it wasn’t always the jar of honey it was made out to be. But she only married him because he was pleasant and he was available and, no doubt, he was like a wasp around the Ros honey pot.

  The kettle clicked off, and Eddie made coffee, stirred it with a knife and threw the cigarette end in the sink before lighting another.

  Then he ambled into the lounge and sat in the window seat, the moonlight slipping past the curtains in here, too, to give his blank eyes something to play with as his mind toiled on with the problem.

  If she’d known that Eddie’s marriage had died roughly the same time she had in hospital from her injuries, maybe things would have turned out very differently. Jilly had killed herself, and, callous though this sounded to Eddie at half-two in the morning with a troubled mind, the way had been cleared for Eddie and Ros to make a go of it.

  He wasn’t being big-headed when he suggested to himself that she would have said yes to him in the blink of an eye. Not at all; Ros had made it quite clear they had a good, deep, friendship, and both of them had known it would have grown into something much more.

  But Ros didn’t know Jilly had died. Ros had thought that if she went back to her old life, then she could expect just that, her old life, where she shared Eddie and always came off second best, always got the crumbs.