Author's Note: First up, I want to thank everyone for the reviews, I really appreciate your feedback! Secondly, I want to reiterate that I don't own any of this and this is not for profit. Thank you again for reading, and reviews are always appreciated.
Chapter Two: Where the Sun Never Sets.
If he was lucky, the Police would arrive first. But given how bad his day had been so far, Darren O'Casey wasn't taking any chances. He already had a bag packed with a change of clothes; his toothbrush and toiletries had been unceremoniously stuffed into one of Roisin's old make-up bags and wrapped up in a towel. The bag lay, still spilling its contents, on the floor of the master bedroom, near the bed he had shared with Roisin for the last six months. He could still see the creases where her body had lain just the previous morning. When he touched it, he half-expected it to still be warm. He found it impossible – an aberration of nature – to equate the intimacy of his memories of her with the body that now lay stone cold on a mortuary slab.
With one final look at the unmade bed, he turned from the room and descended a small flight of steps into the living room. He pulled out the settee with a shove; pushing it straight into the coffee table and knocking it over with an almighty crash of glass smashing against the wood decking floor. Cursing heavily, he kept the rest of his attention on the Safe into which he hastily jabbed a combination number. Once inside, he pulled out a roll of banknotes, a clear plastic bag containing an unknown quantity of Colombia's finest marching powder and a handgun. Concealed beneath a false floor, however, was several ounces of plastic explosive and detonators. He took the Semtex and carefully replaced the false floor. The detonators could stay; so long as they were well away from the explosives, he knew they were useless.
He got up to return to the bedroom, and pulled up short at the sound of footsteps in the hall, muffled voices whispering to one another. He slid down to the floor, making himself as small as possible. He thought of running, but there was only one way out. He looked about for somewhere to hide, but the flat is open plan, and these are not men who give up easily. Then, just seconds later, he heard the deathly efficient metallic click of another gun being cocked, heard the slide of the bullet entering the chamber and swallowed the gorge of bile rising in his throat as the weapon was placed gently at the back of his head.
"Going somewhere?" the soft Cockney voice enquired.
Darren froze. Slowly, he turned his head to see from where his imminent death was coming, and felt the breath being almost physically knocked out of his lungs. "You!" he gasped, wide-eyed in shock and disbelief.
The other man smiled, the gun still trained on Darren O'Casey's head. "Come along now, Dee. Let's not make this any harder than it already is, eh?"
It was at an unconscionably early hour of the morning when Ruth arrived on the Grid and sunk gratefully into her seat. She still needed tea, but that could wait a moment while she got her breath back after her dash across London. While that happened, however, she fished in her bag and pulled out the file she had created for Roisin Hicks the night before. There was nothing sensational in there, but she thought there was just enough to pique Harry's interest, after all.
She genuinely hoped so. The day before, when Ros and Lucas had turned to her to talk to Harry, she gladly agreed. But the Boss man was implacable – it was a police matter; a straightforward murder. Truth be told, her intuition had already kicked in, reminding her uncomfortably of the Cotterdam affair. What appeared to be a clear suicide had turned out to be …
Ruth cut that comparison off abruptly, and focused on young Roisin. It didn't do to dwell on the past, but just like that man, this dead young woman was trying to tell her something, and she had to figure it out. If she was going to figure it out, then she definitely needed tea. She switched on her computer, and while it booted up, made a beeline for the drinks machine.
It was eight-thirty am by the time Harry joined her on the Grid. She was on him as soon as he set foot through the door, before he could even shrug off his over-coat. "Harry!" she called out, raising her head above her monitor.
He looked at her, alarm giving way to dismay. "Ruth!" he groaned, "what have I told you about working all night?"
As touched by his concern as she was, she was quick to set the record straight. "I haven't, I swear! I just wanted to see you before the others get here."
The dismay in Harry's expression rapidly melted away, reforming itself into a rather satisfied smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. It made her heart skip a beat every time she saw it. "You wanted to see me alone? Really?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied. "About Roisin Hicks-"
"Oh. That."
She never saw a smile fade so fast, and she hated to disappoint. "Just five minutes of your time," she said, tilting her head to one side, giving him the eyes. "Please!" She hated to resort to such vulgar means, but Ros and Lucas were relying on her, and they'd be on the Grid themselves in less than half an hour.
Harry was powerless to resist, but only capitulated with a sigh of resignation that didn't bode well. "Two minutes starting from now," he compromised, "in my office."
Flattening her small smile of triumph, Ruth followed Harry to his private office, hugging her files close to her chest. She dropped them on his desk the moment he got his feet under the table and stood back as he read through the report.
"You'll see where we went wrong before, Harry," she explained as he continued to read. "It's not her; it's the boyfriend: Darren O'Casey."
Harry frowned. "I had him down as a small time gangster, what on earth was he doing with this journalist?"
"That's odd; that's really odd. Either she didn't know who he really was; or he didn't know who she really was-"
Harry laughed mirthlessly. "If they're anything like us then neither knew who they really were!"
Ruth sighed in disapproval. "Not funny. But look, O'Casey runs the East End, pretty much. He's got two nightclubs, a boxing club and a healthy protection racket that spreads all through the East of the city. Recently, he's had a falling out with his counterpart in South London, but we don't know why, or how badly. That, in my opinion, is why Roisin was murdered."
"As part of a turf war, perhaps?" asked Harry, suddenly serious. "If this is correct, O'Casey has links to some very shady characters in Dublin."
Ruth, back in her element, leaned against the desk, closer to Harry. "That's why Ros was trying to get Roisin as an Asset," she explained eagerly, "she was perfectly placed to dig up sound information on O'Casey and his cohorts here, and in Dublin. It could be other gangsters, it could even be paramilitary. That's what Ros was trying to find out."
The day before, Harry had mockingly derided O'Casey and his gang as wannabe Kray Brothers. There was no lingering doubt left in Harry now; his expression was that special kind of blank that meant his brain was going into over-drive. "If he is facilitating an attack from dissident Republicans on British soil, this could set Anglo-Irish relations back forty bloody years!"
"It gets worse," Ruth warned. "If this is a turf war, as well as a possible diplomatic incident with our new friends, then things could turn very ugly on the streets of south and east London."
A thin ray of sunlight slanted through a crack in the boarded up windows, illuminating nothing more than a patch of dusty old floorboard that was directly in its path. Disorientated; exhausted, and in excruciating pain from a recently received kicking, Darren used that thin ray of light to focus all his energies on. It was all he had to escape the horror that lurked in the glutinous darkness of the room. But, he couldn't block out the sounds coming from those same shadows.
At first, it was a knife slowly being sharpened. The noise of the metal blade being gradually teased across the rough sharpener set his teeth on edge, the whole charade manufactured to deliberately drive him beyond reason with fear. Then it was the men pacing back and forth as they fired questions at him. Then the knife sharpening began again. The cycle continued. He had given them nothing, but he had lost track of time – the first step on the road to serious mental torture. He looked again at the shaft of light, trying to work out from the angle how high the sun was.
Then, even that was snatched from his as a one hundred watt bulb was suddenly shone directly in his face, just as a disembodied fist slammed into his stomach, making him double over and fall out of the chair he'd recently been propped up in. A box was opened, and the contents shoved under his nose on the floor. A single, human and severed finger, a diamond engagement ring still attached to it. The sight registered, and he vomited violently over the bare wooden floorboards.
"Why?" he demanded to know, spitting the acrid bile from his mouth. "Why her?"
His tormentor appeared in the broad pool of light, and dropped to his haunches in front of Darren. Looking down at the man now writhing in his own sick, he wrinkled his nose in disgust, and looked away into the shadows.
"She was a journalist, you know that?" he asked, heaving a bark of dry laughter. "Either you deliberately brought journalist scum into our gang to expose your friends while covering your own back; or you really have gone soft in the fucking head, old son. That's why I had to do it. That's why someone's got to take this patch over-"
"And it's got to be you, Frankie?" Darren hissed up at him, his old defiance rearing up seeing as he had nothing left to lose. He was going to die anyway, so he was determined to die fighting. "You betrayed me; you murdered Roisin to get at me, and now you're going to do a deal with the boys down south-"
"Oh, shut up!" roared Frankie. "You were doing a deal with your friends in Dublin. What the fuck was all that about? You were like a son to me, Darren. I thought I got you away from all that; I thought I taught you how to fight like a man. You took what you could, then tried to sell us out to the Irish. You know what, Dee, I'm pissed off. But I'd feel better if you told me where those detonators are."
Darren had guessed that much, but he remained silent.
"Tie 'im up; against the wall if you will, Gentlemen."
At least it would be quick. He put up no resistance as the plasticuffs were reapplied to his now swollen wrists, and allowed himself to be dragged across the floor to the wall, where he knelt as best he could. Still, he had to slump forwards to stop himself from falling. A second later, and the over-head lights came back on, but all he could see was the yellowing wallpaper. Footsteps, efficient and slow, paced up behind him as a gun was cocked, ready to fire.
Darren closed his eyes and braced himself for the head shot that was just a nano-second away. His heart beat furiously, even though he thought only of Roisin. He knew she was a journalist. He knew the real Roisin. He takes his final breath, and holds it as the hammer of the gun falls on an empty chamber. The last thing he heard as he passed out cold was the raucous laughter of Francis Morris and his new allies.
The corner of Ros's mouth twitched into a semi-smile as Lucas appeared through a parting of the crowds. She had decided to wait outside the car for him, leaning casually against the bonnet and breathing in deep lungfuls of the city smog as though it were a fresh, rustic, breeze. As soon as Lucas drew near, she spied the baker's box balanced in the palm of his hand.
"Don't tell me," she said, as soon as he managed to get close enough to hear over the din of London, "you've already eaten the one with the chocolate on?"
He looked affronted. "You don't even like the chocolate ones!" he protested, hastily swiping the tell-tale residual stains from his mouth with the sleeve of his free hand.
"I know, I just wanted to shame you," she retorted with a smirk as she zapped the keys at the car door to unlock them again. "Never mind, pass a strawberry jam one over before you scoff the lot."
Not waiting for Lucas to oblige, Ros reached into the box and picked her own doughnut as they got settled back in. "You know," she told him, "after eight years in a Russian prison you shouldn't even need these. You should be content to subsist on a diet of dried leaves and carpet cleaner."
She watched his reaction through the tail of her eye, gratified at the amused chuckle. The others on the Grid, with hearts firmly in the right place, always treated Lucas like he was made of glass. But Ros knew he was tougher than he looked: the gallows humour made him feel 'normal'; the kid glove treatment made him feel like a mad aunt being kept in the attic out of a misplaced sense of familial duty.
"You're wrong," he told her earnestly, "the dried leaf – note he singular, Myers – was for special occasions, only. Anyway, what have we got here?"
Turning to business, he opened the glove compartment where he'd stashed the two files handed to him by Ruth back at the Grid. One showed a picture of a girl with windswept blond hair, a toothy smile but distant blue eyes. On the back, the name "Roisin Hicks" was immaculately printed in block capitals in Ruth's familiar hand. It informed them she was twenty-seven at the time of her death; worked for the London Journal newspaper and moved to England from Belfast, Northern Ireland, nine years ago to attend Liverpool's John Moore University. Nothing spectacular; nothing out of the ordinary. Except that the woman wound up dead on a London street with a bullet through her heart for reasons unknown.
"I think Ruth's right you know," said Ros, before taking the last bite of her doughnut. "It's not her – she's just the innocent caught up in this. But look at the boyfriend."
Lucas closed Roisin's file, and picked up the second marked: Darren O'Casey. There was much more in it. The picture showed a brown haired, green-eyed and square-jawed Dubliner. Twenty-nine, with convictions for drug dealing, owning a gun without a license, grievous bodily harm and breaking and entering since his arrival in England over fifteen years previously.
"According to the Police file, he was 'reformed' courtesy of one Francis Morris," Ros explained, turning the keys in the ignition now that their lunch was over. "By reformed, I mean taken into a much more genteel criminal gang and put to much better use in the east end ganglands."
"Charming," Lucas sighed, closing the file. "So, how are we going to get him to talk to us while we're pretending to be Police officers?"
"We're there to offer victim support," replied Ros, "go softly, that's all. He might talk if he thinks we're only there to offer all that touchy-feely crap. I get him outside, you fit the bug in the phone, and we're off. You might even be able to grab a few items of interest, if we're lucky."
As they crawled through the London traffic, Lucas tried to imagine Ros taking a 'softly, softly' approach with anyone – never mind an ex-career criminal. By the time they reached the O'Casey residence in Bethnal Green, it was almost three pm. The building was a three-storey Georgian house divided into much sought-after apartments, the third floor of which belonged to O'Casey. The front door was already open when they arrived, it swung ajar as Ros went to sound the buzzer for O'Casey's flat. They glanced at one another, each noting the unusual lapse in London security, and stepped inside.
It was silent. Presumably, the other occupants of the flats were still at work, unaware of the murder of their neighbour. Together, they climbed the stairs, the thick carpet muffling their footfalls nicely. It was clean; well kept; respectable. A gentrified slum in the once notorious East End. They reached the highly polished front door of the third and final apartment and knocked loudly, their false identity badges at the ready. Waiting in silence for a few minutes, Lucas gave Ros a small nudge, and nodded to the edge of the door, just where the lock was.
Ros saw it, too. A great chunk of the door had been wedged off where the lock had been jemmied off. Tentatively, Ros reached out and prodded the door, and watched as it swung silently open to reveal a dark hallway.
Lucas was the first in. He reached beneath his jacket where his gun was holstered safely, and touched it for reassurance as he entered the hallway. Ros was barely a footstep behind him, keeping close as she struggled to adjust to the change in light. Just on the off-chance, she called his name. "Mr O'Casey!"
Then Lucas pitched in, too. "Mr O'Casey, it's the Police; we just want a quick word."
They clung to the wall, looked at one another and strained their ears, listening for even the remotest sign of life. But it was as silent as the crypt in there. Ros nodded to Lucas, a silent signal for him to carry on deeper into the flat. Tentatively, he backed down the hallway, nudging the doors open as he went. Slowly, they went from room to room, careful not to touch or disturb anything, not even opening the curtains to let the light in.
"Nothing," Ros remarked, once they had given the property an initial sweep. "But looks like we've been burgled."
"No," replied Lucas, "look, nothing of value has been taken. Computers, laptops, DVD player and TV. All still here, just knocked over."
They were in the living room. The sofa had been pulled out, a coffee table knocked over and smashed, and books scattered about the room. Ros watched Lucas for a moment as he ducked behind the sofa and began prodding at something. Meanwhile, she picked up a laptop and placed it on the sofa where she would see it and remember to take it with her when they left.
"Ros, come and see this," said Lucas's muffled voice from behind the sofa.
She put down the PC tower she had just disconnected, and stepped around the broken glass to see what Lucas was looking at. He was half-concealed in a great hole in the wall – a safe. He wriggled out again, tousling his hair so that it was standing on end as he did so, and pointed at the floor of the safe. "A false bottom," he said. "There's drugs and ammo being kept in the main safe; yet something more hidden in the false floor – detonators. Look."
Ros took the detonators, holding them gingerly in their bag. They were no bigger than a ten pence piece, but could cause damage enough to wipe a whole street out if attached to a wad of Semtex. "No sign of any explosives?"
"Not that I can see."
"Whoever turned this place over-" she broke herself off as she recalled something in the bedroom. "Wait there."
She backtracked through the flat, down the hallway, and into the master bedroom again. There, next to the bed, a hastily packed bag. The contents were spilling over the sides, on the very top was a creased photograph showing Darren with his arms wrapped around a smiling Roisin Hicks.
"He was packing his bags, but they're still here," she told Lucas as she re-entered the up-turned living room. "I get the feeling Mr O'Casey hasn't just popped out for a pint of milk, Lucas."
"So." he replied, rocking back on his heels, "you don't think whoever forced their way in here was an over-enthusiastic well-wisher, either?"
She rolled her eyes, and turned back to the room to gather up the laptops, phones and computers. Anything that could shed some light on where their man could have got to. God knows how long it would take them to comb the flat for the evidence they needed.
The rear doors of the transit van opened, letting in a flood of light that made Darren wince and strain against his bindings. The plasticuffs dug deeper into his wrists, bringing a fresh trickle of blood seeping into the palms of his hands as his captors hauled him out of the van by the armpits, letting his feet drag across the loose gravel path to the water's edge.
Once his eyes had adjusted to the influx of light, he could see they were in London's Dockyards. It was the last remaining mile of dockland that had yet remained untouched by the mauling hands of the architects and urban regenerators. It was that part of the docklands where the ruins of the old British Empire still stood rusting, half immersed in the waters of the Thames and hadn't yet given up the ghost of the past and crumbled into the dirty river. The gateway to the world made redundant by the advent of air travel. The wreckage of cranes, wharfs and even the odd, abandoned ship lay rusting in their long forgotten ports. It was like stepping into an old movie.
He took it all in to distract himself from what was happening two feet behind him. Off in the distance, the sun was setting. The horizon burned golden with the final rays of sun, a flock of geese swooped downwards from the sky, honking noisily and landing in the mudflats a few yards upriver. It felt surreal to him, to be watching the colour drain from the land.
"Still no sign of his detonators?" a man asks. "This is stupid."
Darren was no longer listening, he was lost in the landscape – it looked like a painting. He had forgotten that London could look like that. St Paul's Cathedral was just a silhouette in the distance.
"One more chance to save yourself, O'Casey. Tell us where your detonators are."
Yes, he thinks, the sun set is beautiful. But the place he's going is like the old Empire, it's where the sun never sets. He picks out Westminster Abbey. The grandeur and the squalor always rubbed shoulders in this city; since time immemorial. He's not telling them where the detonators are. They'll kill him anyway, and he just doesn't want them to know.
"Oh, fuck this!"
The gun shot shatters the silence of the dusk, sending the Geese scattering skywards. The velocity of the bullet through his head pitched him forwards, dead before he hits the muddy banks of the Thames.