Читать книгу Greywater - Mr David Dalby - Страница 1

Hazel Vernon ran.

She chased. She knew she was younger, fitter and faster than the big, lumbering, badly dressed man she was trying to catch. Somehow, though he was ten years older, several kilos heavier and a red faced, puffing wreck, Harry Sanford managed to remain just out of reach.

They raced down the rain slicked streets, as a steady drizzle threatened to become a downpour. Sanford’s shoes slipping and sliding on the wet pavement. His arms cartwheeling absurdly as he managed to stay on his feet, a man propelled as much by desperation than any skill.

Hazel ran after him, trying to keep her pace measured. A steady, relaxed rhythm, knowing that, in the end she could outlast his mad run. There were a couple more police officers behind her and she knew that there would be more in front. Shouting at him to stop hadn’t worked. So they ran on. Past locals. Past tourists. No doubt social media would have something to say about this as several of the people they passed recorded the incident and would, of course, be posting it on some kind of website.

Police chase fleeing man.

Man easily outruns cops.

The one that got away.

Hazel could see the headlines already. No one knew Harry Sanford, and no one had any idea why the police were chasing him. But everyone made certain they neither helped nor hindered his capture. Neither side had friends here, just an audience. Spectators who were waiting to see how this turned out.

They had been running for about ten minutes now. Ever since Hazel and two police officers turned up at a rather run down old house on the outskirts of town. This had been Harry Sanford’s old family home. He had grown up there and learned to be a petty criminal under the tutelage of his long dead father and, presumably, long suffering mother. He’d fled there to avoid the police and it had been the first place the police had gone to.

Harry was no criminal genius. Just a very big and not very bright, badly educated man who had the misfortune to be born into the family and area he had been. Harry Sanford was, to put it simply, a very unlucky man.

Instead of saying, “It’s a fair cop.” And putting his hands up he had run.

Over the fence and down the narrow back alley, an alley too narrow for a car. The police couldn’t get back to their car in time to be able to cut him off so they had simply run after him.

By now they were in town proper. As Hazel ran she could hear the police sirens in the distance but getting louder. She wasn’t sure if Harry could hear them he just ran. He seemed oblivious to everything except running. So far there hadn’t been enough people in the street to cause much obstruction. But as they moved further into town the possibility that someone was likely to get hurt increased.

The police sirens were growing louder, and coming from the opposite direction. Right ahead was a bridge over the railway. A long, steep bridge. Harry was already flagging, his arms waving erratically his legs looking like jelly, the stupidly long coat he wore threatening to trip him up.

The bridge must have registered because he cut left right before it and down a side street. Hazel followed, she was starting to loosen up now and get settled into a comfortable jog.

Harr Sanford managed to run about halfway down the street before he stopped and leaned against one of the houses, gasping for breath. He wheezed and nearly retched, doubled over.

Hazel came to a stop about three metres from him.

“You……” He said. And bent double, hands on his knees, then he waved vaguely in her direction. “You….” He tried again and shook his head. “…Stay…away…”

“It’s over.” Hazel could hear the two constables running up behind her and the siren of a nearby police car becoming louder. “Come on, Harry.” She remained where she was, out of reach. There was no hurry. The two constables came up behind her. The police car siren was much louder now. “Let’s go, we’ve had enough exercise for the day.”

“No, I’m not coming.” He was like an oversized petulant child. Hazel didn’t know him very well but he was in his mid forties. He wasn’t a man who had spent his life in a healthy way. He was a good thirty kilos heavier than he should be. He drank, he smoked, exercise was something alien to him. In his younger days he had probably been a good looking man. Now he was just big and soft. Hazel assumed he was fairly good at what he did, which was looking tough without actually needing to be tough and stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down from people who were smaller and weaker than he was. Beyond that there wasn’t much to say in his favour.

The police car arrived in the road. It slowed and drove carefully past the little collection of people. The siren switched off but the blue light continued to revolve. In this city the Freelander was a popular choice for a police car because of the nearby countryside.

The car parked across the road just beyond Harry Sanford. He watched it arrive and park up, his eyes going wider. He was scared. That was bad. You never quite knew what a scared person would do.

“That’s your ride, Harry.” Hazel said, “Come on we can all go to the station together and we can get this sorted out.” The locals had noticed what was happening and turned out to see. Mostly middle aged women and a few men. “Come on, Harry, we can fix this. You’re in trouble but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.”

“No.” He was getting his breath back, but he wasn’t going anywhere and he knew it, “I’m not going. You’re not taking me in.” He looked around desperately. “I can’t.”

“You don’t have much choice, Harry.” Hazel said, “Let’s go, at least we’ll be out of the rain. You can sit down, have a nice cup of tea.”

“I don’t want a nice cup of sodding tea!”

“Coffee then.” Hazel said. “Come on, Harry. You tell us your troubles, and we’ll see what we can do. How does that sound?”

It might have sounded promising, Hazel had kept calm and gently pointed out that he wasn’t going anywhere other than with the police. His future, at least his immediate one, was currently written in stone. It might even have penetrated his dense and frightened skull.

But then one of the locals had to step out from the crowd, out from the background with not a mobile phone but a big professional looking camera. He knelt down, aimed the camera at Harry Sanford and let off the electronic flash.

”Not coming!” It was as if the harsh blue electronic light was a signal, “No!” Harry yelled and ran towards Hazel full tilt his arms stretched out in front. “Leave me alone.”

He powered into her at top speed. Hazel grasped at his coat, stuck up a foot and let the momentum knock her off her feet.

The pavement was hard, cold wet, and she trusted to her body armour to absorb most of the impact. She went down, straightening the leg she had positioned in his stomach. The Japanese call it Tomo Nage. A pretty devastating, and very well executed circle throw. Hazel pulled with her arms and pushed with her right leg. Momentum and gravity did the rest.

Harry Sanford slammed into the pavement beyond her head, right on his back with no fancy space age body armour to protect him.

Hazel lay on the pavement knowing she should be on her feet as soon as possible, but she remained there, as the rain began to come down and the idiot with the camera continued to illuminate the street with his artificial lightning.

“You all right, Sergeant?” One of the constables asked.

“I’m fine.” Hazel sat up. She looked round at the moaning form of Harry Sanford stretched out on the pavement. “Read him his right and then I’ll work out what we do with him.

“I’m not really sure what we can do with him.” Michelle Russo was part of the crown prosecution service. She was not quite as tall as Hazel's 1.8 metres, and she looked slimmer without being overly skinny. She had a reassuringly Scottish accent and carefully prepared shoulder length hair. Today she was in a dark wine coloured business suit. Hazel was in the black jeans and sweater she had worn earlier, her coat being over the chair in her office. “I mean, the man’s an idiot.” She and Hazel were looking at Harry Sanford through a viewer linked to the camera in the interview room. Usually the criminals knew they were being watched. Harry, on some level, was probably aware of it but he didn’t seem to care. He looked finished, sitting on the not very comfortable chair, his elbows on the desk, head in hands. He’d been relieved of his overcoat and the few personal items he came on with. Now he wore a cheap, badly fitted suit and tie. The shirt collar was open. The stringy dark coloured tie pulled loose. Soon that would be removed in case he decided to kill himself.

“Idiot is a strong word.” Hazel said.

“You think so? Most criminals would be bright enough to want legal representation by now.”

“Harry is in trouble.” Hazel said, “I doubt if he wants his usual solicitor.”

Michelle Russo shook her head, “It won’t be long before Eddie Symes knows we have one of his men here. Do you even know what’s going on?” She leaned casually against the wall. “You never seem to know, Hazel.”

“I know Harry isn’t going to want to go back to working for Eddie Symes. Not even if we could let him out. He’s not an idiot and he’s not so stupid as to think his friends are his friends any more.” Hazel pushed open the door and went in with Russo right behind. “Hello, Harry, how are you feeling.”

“Don’t bleeding ask.” He looked up at Hazel, “You nearly broke my back. I ache all over.”

“So you should.” Hazel sat down. Russo also sat and said, to the listening microphone “Detective Sergeant Vernon and Michelle Russo have entered the room.” Then she gave the time.

“I know who she is.” Harry said, “She’s the girl who wants to lock me up.”

“The judge does that.” Hazel said. She let the “girl” comment pass. Harry wasn’t very bright, and he was also old fashioned. To him any woman younger than himself was a girl. She opened the file she’d brought in with her. “She just puts the evidence together.” She shook her head, “What have you gone and got yourself into Harry? This stuff is way out of your league.”

“Tony said….” He immediately stopped talking.

“Tony Symes?” Hazel said. Harry shook his head forcefully, “You’ve been taking orders from Eddie’s brother?”

“I never said Tony Symes. I never did.”

“Harry, Tony doesn’t believe in employing anyone more intelligent than he is, and he is not the brains of that family.” Tony was Eddie’s younger brother. His younger, less intelligent and far less capable brother. The working of the local gangs was a bit outside Hazel’s usual sphere of knowledge but even she knew Eddie let his little brother handle only the simple things in life. By most standards Tony was quite the legitimate businessman in the literal sense of the word. If only because he was too unreliable to be trusted in a criminal capacity.

“I didn’t say Tony Symes.” Harry said between clenched teeth.

“All right, Harry.” Hazel said calmly, “You never said Tony Symes. For no reason that we can imagine you and your friend, Charlie Harris, decided to go out and kill two men at random.” She selected a couple of mug shots from the folder. “These two men.”

“No, I didn’t. You can’t prove that. You can’t prove it.”

“Scotty Mayne.” Hazel showed him one of the mugshots. “Not the most pleasant man who ever walked the Earth perhaps. Multiple arrests for affray, grievous bodily harm, threatening behaviour. Two convictions for assault. His real name was Hamish but everyone called him Scotty.”

“Very original.” Michelle said in her Scottish accent.

“Then we have Mark Wells.” Hazel showed him the second mugshot, “Mark wasn’t as bad as Scotty. He wasn’t a violent man. He might sell some drugs now and then. He might hang out with bad people but he wasn’t really bad.!

“I don’t know them, never seen them before. You can’t prove anything.”

“How is your friend, Charlie Harris, these days, Harry? We’ve been looking for him, but we can’t find him anywhere. Not as easily as we found you anyway.”

“He’s fine. I don’t know, I’ve not seen him.”

“Not dead is he. By any chance?”

“What? Charlie? No, he’s not dead. He isn’t. Not Charlie.”

“The reason I ask,” Hazel said, “is because these two men.” She tapped the mug shots.

“I don’t know them, I told you, I never seen them before.”

“These men that you don’t know and have never seen before in your life, they worked for a man named Victor Monk.”

“I don’t know…”

“I don’t expect you have met him.” Hazel said, she had never met Victor Monk and she only knew of three people who had actually met him. “But you know who he is, don’t you? Every person I know has heard of Victor Monk. I even know a vicar who has heard of Monk.” In that case the vicar was one of the few people who had actually met Monk.

“I know who he is.” Sanford admitted. “Of course I know.”

“You and Charlie killed a couple of men who worked for the biggest gangster in town, Harry. I mean Monk is right at the top of the tree. I know your boss, Eddie Symes, is new in town and I know his brother isn’t all that bright, but I cannot believe Eddie would sanction something like that. Monk could take out Eddie, his brother, you, the whole gang before breakfast. But maybe he just wants the two men who killed his two men. You and Charlie Harris.”

“We didn’t…”

“So you keep telling me, Harry, and so I keep not believing what you say.” Hazel said, “You and Charlie are local boys, you’re not like Eddie and tony, they just breezed in because there was a gap in the market. You and Charlie go back years, the two of you were at school together. Where is he, Harry? Where’s Charlie?”

“I don’t bloody well know, you stupid bitch.” The handcuffs kept him where he was. which was good. Hazel didn’t want to hurt him again.

“To bring the conversation to a more reasonable level,” Michelle said, “On the question of proof, we can and will prove you killed those men.”

“I didn’t.”

“We have the murder weapons, a couple of flick knives, we have the dealer you, personally, bought them off.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Down at the docks. We have four witnesses who can place both you and Charlie, along with a third man, at the scene. You’re in for a long stretch, Harry, and you’ll do it alone because we can’t find Charlie Harris….and you don’t want to talk about Tony Symes, the man who got you into this to begin with.”

“I don’t know…..”

“Harry,” Michelle said, quietly, “If you know nothing and no one, I can’t help you. But let’s say you know things. You know people because you’ve been around tony Symes a lot, and Symes likes to talk. He brags. If you knew things that could help us, we can help you.”

“I’m not grassing…”

“No one is asking you to tell on your friends, Harry. But think about it, your friends are not your friends any more. If we let you go and give you back to Eddie and his brother, what is going to happen to you? It’s an eye for an eye, Harry. You and Charlie for those two men. Scores evened.”

“It’s the only deal you’ll get, Harry.” Hazel said, “And it’s about the best one available.”

“You two bitches are a right couple of….bitches.”

“Maybe so, Harry.” Hazel said, “But you will do as we say.”