Chapter 3
The Big Wide World

Neither Mark nor Eve had argued with him.

Or rather, Ironside hadn't given them the chance to argue, and he'd willfully ignored the subtle difference. Both of them were enthusiastic about their assignments when he had spoken to them. Undercover work was dangerous, but could be very rewarding and this time it would bring them the evidence they needed, Ironside was sure.

The only proper problem was going to be Commissioner Randall. He wasn't going to be pleased with this turn of events. Ironside had known him for a long time, and understood the way he thought.

The Chief had anticipated some of Randall's objections, and making sure Mark and Eve were well briefed was vital, so they talked for two hours, discussing the case and their covers. Only after that did Ironside travel across town to see the Commissioner in his own office.

They were shown straight in, and Dennis was waiting for them, looking more stern than usual. Ironside wheeled himself forward, letting Mark and Eve keep well out of the line of fire.

There was a file on Randall's desk, and Ironside recognised his own report into the case, including his request for authorisation to go undercover. Dennis was waiting for Ironside to speak, but the Chief waited too, feeling that if he spoke first, he would lose the air of confidence he had by appearing too eager to justify himself.

The two men stared at each other. Finally, Commissioner Randall looked away first.

'You know I don't like it, Bob,' Dennis said with a heavy sigh. 'It's far too dangerous.'

'I realise that,' Ironside replied. 'So do my team. Only a fool would think that it was anything else.'

The Commissioner clearly didn't like being agreed with in these circumstances. He frowned.

'There will be considerable danger, to both of them.' The Commissioner looked at Eve and Mark, then back to Ironside. 'This is a big risk, maybe too big a risk. Especially to Mark.'

That was always going to be the weakest part of Ironside's plan as, strictly speaking, Mark wasn't a police officer. But he had the insider knowledge of the fight scene that Ironside needed, without him they could only look in from the outside. They needed someone who could get them in. Mark's cover was vital.

'I don't need to tell you why we need Mark,' Ironside said. 'But he'll have the minimum of exposure. He'll be in an out in a few hours.'

'A lot can go wrong in a few hours,' said Dennis darkly.

'I can take care of myself,' said Mark.

'I don't doubt that, Mark. But if you're right, Bob, and these people have killed...' the Commissioner trailed off.

'I know what I'm doing,' said Mark.

'We all do,' said Ironside firmly.

There was a short pause, and the Chief felt his confidence rising.

'I'm still not inclined to give my blessing to this, Bob,' said the Commissioner.

'But all the evidence points to a well organised and well funded organisation,' replied Ironside. 'And John Carlson has that organisation. We have to find a way in, quickly, before any more people die.'

'I don't think the evidence is like that at all,' replied Randall.

Anxious not to annoy his friend any more than was necessary, Ironside leaned forward earnestly in his wheelchair.

'Speed is the key,' he told the Commissioner. 'At the moment, they think no one is interested, but the minute they realise we are, the evidence is going to get a whole lot harder to find. And a lot more dangerous for everyone.'

The Commissioner nodded reluctantly, perhaps unwilling to concede the point.

'With both Eve and Mark undercover, you're going to be short staffed,' said Randall. Ironside gave an inward smile. If Dennis had resorted to that old one, this was going to be a lot easier than he'd expected. But he couldn't let his hopes show on the outside, or Dennis would know something was up.

'I can manage for just a few days!' he said grumpily. 'I'm not totally helpless, Dennis. And Ed will be close at hand.'

Randall nodded slowly and turned to gaze out of the window, to the busy city beyond. Ironside watched in silence. His instincts were telling him that the case was on, and Dennis would agree.

After a long minute of staring, and keeping them all waiting, the Commissioner turned back to Ironside. He wasn't smiling, but the Chief was still confident.

'Ok, Bob, you win,' said Randall. 'You can have one week, but that's all. And you two,' he turned to look at Eve and Mark, 'take no risks. That's an order!'

It was already well past four, and Ed had been working since seven. He hadn't taken long to find the right place, and fortunately, this was the last one on his list.

He'd had a full day of chasing after leads, with very little success, and he didn't have his hopes pinned too high for the last one, either. He hadn't even managed to contact the Chief, so he had no idea how the others were getting on with their part of the case. He just hoped they were getting on better than him, or the Chief's hopes of getting this closed up quickly were going to dampened to nothing. And Ironside wasn't going to like that one bit.

Ed paused outside the building for a moment, looking up at the balconies and windows above, trying to gather his thoughts.

This was just another part of his job, being the messenger of death. He'd done it more times than he cared to remember. Doing the same thing, again and again didn't make it any easier, but in some sense he was used to grief. He was used to seeing how people reacted, and being the outsider at a very personal time.

It should have been the ones with family that were the worst. There were tears and the overwhelming sense of anguish and loss. But every so often he would get one where there was nobody to tell, and nobody cared. To Ed, that was the worst. These were the faceless, and sometimes nameless, people that had no one waiting for news, and no one to care if they lived or died; people who'd become just bodies on a slab.

This last body had been that of Scott Thompson, who had been fished out of the bay last night. In life, he had been a young mechanic that scraped a living as an apprentice in a small garage. This time, no one had even bothered to report him missing. There had been on formal identification, the dental records had been good enough, and the post mortem had shown he'd been beaten, then dumped; exactly the same MO as all the others.

Now, it was Ed's job to go and find the place where he'd lived, and tell whoever was there that Scott Thompson wasn't coming back.

After a day of dead-end leads and morbid work, it was the very last thing he wanted to do. But this was the final one, and then he could go back to the relative calm of Ironside's office, away from the harsh realities of police work.

With a deep breath, he steeled himself one more time, and pushed open the door.

As apartments went, it wasn't a bad place to stay; it was reasonably clean, but small and probably cheap. The neighbourhood was rough, but not as bad as it could have been, and there were sturdy-looking locks on the outside doors. The hall was plainly decorated and dark, and it was quitet, not one responded when Ed walked in. The first room on the right had its door half-open and inside Ed could hear the sound of the TV, played a little too loudly. He glanced through the gap, and saw an old man sitting on a tatty old sofa, avidly watching a music program.

Ed guessed the man would be the landlord or the caretaker, and rapped sharply on the door.

'Come! Come!' called the old man, waving a hand and not looking away from the TV. 'Come in!'

Ed pushed open the door, alarmed by the amount of junk that such a small room could hold. He carefully stepped forward through the piles of papers and boxes and old magazines, hoping not to bump into a anything and cause a knock-on avalanche of rubbish.

The old man still hadn't turned round, so Ed pulled out his badge and lowered it in front of the other man's face, between him and the TV.

'Oh!' said the old man. 'The police!'

'Yes, sir,' said Ed, tucking his badge away. 'I would like to ask…'

The old man hushed him with a wave.

'I only have a few minutes left!' he said, gesturing at the TV. 'Then I'll talk to you!'

'This will only take a moment.'

'Shh. Shh!'

At the end of a long day, Ed was more than tempted to snap back, but restrained himself. There was nothing to be gained from annoying the man, besides he's been at this all day and another couple of minutes wasn't going to make much difference.

As he waited, he glanced around the room, at the mountains of books and magazines that were gathered there, in an unceremonious jumble. The only clear space was a thin channel between the main door and the seat, and the seat and the TV.

At last, the music died down and the old man gave a grunt and pushed himself up to turn the television off. Only then did he look round at Ed.

'Let me see that shiny badge again, son,' he said, holding out his hand.

Ed pulled his badge back out of his pocket, and handed it over. The man studied it, and Ed had the chance to study him.

He was less than sixty, but not by much, about five-seven, and at least forty pounds overweight for his height. He had a rounded, almost cheeky, smiling face, with thinning grey hair and a slightly squint nose, as if it had been broken at some time in the past. He was wearing a dark blue overall, with the name of Lincoln printed on the breast pocket.

The man passed the badge back to Ed with a small smile.

'I'm Ron Lincoln,' he said. 'Caretaker, for what it's worth. And what do you want with me, Sergeant Brown?'

'I'm here about Scott Thompson,' Ed replied.

'What you want with him? He ain't left nothing here, if that's what you mean.'

'Well…' Ed hesitated, suddenly unsure.

Sergeant Brown was a man who lived off his instincts every single day. In a high-risk profession like police work, if he didn't listen to his instincts he was likely to end up dead. And since he'd started working so closely with the Chief, Ed's instincts had acquired a new depth.

Today, right then and there, something felt off. Maybe it was the stance of the other man, or the tone of his voice, or just the wording of his question, but Ed's sense of danger suddenly went thought the roof. But he didn't show any outward signs that anything was wrong. He gave a slight frown.

'Whaddya want with him?' insisted Lincoln. 'He's a good lad, and I liked him. I don't want no trouble.'

'I'm afraid… he's dead,' Ed told him.

'Dead? Young Thompson? Shame. Dead?'

Ed nodded.

'When? How?'

Ed didn't feel like giving a proper answer, so instead he just shrugged.

'We're looking into that,' he replied. 'I need to ask you a few questions.'

'Sure.'

'When did you last see him?'

'Two months ago. Maybe three. Just walked out one day and never came back here.'

'But you didn't report him missing?'

Lincoln gave Ed a look.

'Thought he'd done runner. Maybe gone back home. They do sometimes. Thought he'd decided the grass wasn't so green after all and gone running back to ma and pa.'

'He didn't have any relatives,' Ed replied.

'Oh. Didn't know that.'

'Did he say anything before he left?'

'Not really, just that he was going to be away for a few days. Out somewhere. But he looked excited.'

Ed frowned again, and nodded. His odd feeling was still there, and talking to Lincoln wasn't helping him feel any better.

'And what was he like, Scott Thompson?'

Lincoln gave a shrug, now looking almost disinterested.

'I don't know. A good enough tenant, if that's what you mean. Paid up mostly on time. Nice quiet lad. Didn't see no one with him ever. And he worked a lot down at Pete's place on the corner. Not such a good mechanic, mind you.'

Ed nodded. Pete's place was his previous stop, and he'd got almost exactly the same story there.

'And what about his room, all of his belongings?' asked Ed. 'Do you still have them?'

Unlikely though that was, it would at least be something to start with, but his small hopes were quickly dashed when Lincoln shook his head.

'Gone. No one came round for it. And he owed me two months rent by the end of the lease, so I sold it off! Don't like doing it, but I got my own problems. They know the rules when they sign up. And it's all above board too.'

Ed frowned, thinking that this was going to be another waste of time. He'd been chasing dead leads all day and it was getting to be habit-forming. He had one final hope.

'Well,' Ed asked, 'did you keep anything? Stuff that wouldn't sell. Papers. Cards. Mail?'

'What? Why should I keep anything? Does it look like I have the room?'

Ed had to agree with him there, and he would have said as much, when suddenly Lincoln interrupted.

'Wait here! There might be something…'

The old man shuffled off to the hall, leaving Ed to stare around the room once more. There was silence for a minute, then came the faint noise of shuffling and rummaging, and the possibility of the occasional swear word after a particularly large thump.

About five minute later, Lincoln was back, holding a small bundle of envelopes.

'Was gonna burn them,' he told Ed, handing the bundle over. 'But it's been so hot that I never bothered. So I left them out by the dustbins.'

'These are Scott Thompson's?'

'Well, I suppose. But he never saw them. Arrived about the same time he left. I left them in the post box for him and forgot clean about them until a few weeks ago. And I thought I'd just burn then and not let them go to waste.'

Ed glanced down at the envelopes in his hand. It was difficult to tell it they were personal letters or business ones, but either way, it was the only piece of good solid information he'd had all day. He tucked them into his pocket.

'Well, thank you Mr Lincoln,' he said, turning to the door. 'I'll be in touch if I need anything else.'

Lincoln nodded and gave a thin smile.

'And thank you, Sergeant Brown. Maybe I'll see you again.'