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Chapter Twenty-Two;
Bolt

Superintendant Heaton crossed his arms. "Alright, so, for those of us who haven't seen this right through, what's the story so far?"

The meeting had started and though Neil had requested everyone involved join them the room was only half full. Roger and Nate were following up the Trent murder, tracking family, after they'd returned with a note left on the door of the Roxon residence. The note had confused most of the team but since no one had an answer it was left to work out later. Stevie was at Kingmarsh helping find 'Chris' Bolt and Millie hadn't been seen since the hospital. So the others gathered with Inspector Weston and Superintendant Heaton to start from square one again.

Stuart nodded and motioned to the whiteboard beside him. "On the 29th of May, following up some witness statements on a burglary on the High Street, I came across an old informant of mine. Apparently he'd just fallen out of favour with a 'colleague' and wanted revenge. The best way to do this was to sell him out to me. He said that on Monday June 1st Craig Bolt would be bringing in a cruiser-load of illegal, underage girls to work in his joint on Maydell Rd. His words proved fruitless, but we think that was less to do with his information and more on the fact Bolt was tipped off. Nonetheless, Craig was arrested for drugs charges, his fingerprints found on 1 1-kilo bag of cocaine and a statement from his niece that they belonged to him. However, we believe there may be more than 1-kilo to that collection. But then, as you know, Bolt skipped bail. He scarpered. To find him we tracked his associates, which led us to Archibald Natovnia, Croatian gun runner with a violent past. In turn we came to Samuel Bolt, Craig's nephew and our body. Samuel was suspected of running for his uncle, and then for Natovnia. In actuality Samuel was tracking Natovnia to gather evidence against him and try and make him drop a $20,000 debt owed by Samuel's father David Bolt. Like all good debt collectors, Natovnia's interest kept rising."

"What do we know about Natovnia?"

Hayleigh stood and went to the whiteboard, tapping his picture. "Natovnia has been the target of my investigation since 2002. In May 2002 he was spotted with Craig in Blackpool doing some early business. Nothing changed hands but their affiliation started. Not long after that Craig returned to Manchester and DI Wilkins set up the squad to bust Craig, the team that put me undercover." The rest of the team listened intently. Hayleigh hadn't shared much of this before now, finding it likely wasn't relevant to the case. Only one person knew the whole story and she wasn't in the room. As he listened in to Hayleigh, Max checked his phone again. Still nothing. After finding the notepad and getting the very cryptic two sentences off it Max had texted Millie to ask what it meant. He was yet to get a reply. "We don't know a lot about Natovnia, he keeps himself to himself, but we can gather a few things. He contracts out his runners and hit men, this way he can stay only indirectly connected to whatever he orders. He loans money out in large amounts, with even larger amounts of interest, because the interest helps keep his gun business afloat. We've suspected his arms dealer is based somewhere in Turkey but no luck proving that, only hearsay. As far as we can tell he has little to do with drugs, but if he's doing business with Craig then obviously he's come into contact with them somewhere."

"Bolt's drug man?"

Stuart spoke up again. "Nikolai Brecht, best known as Nikolai Kowalski, his mother's maiden name. Kowalski is part owner in a tour company. We thought his business may be a front for something else but a property search the day after the obbo at the docks came up empty-handed. Same with his home. Wherever he's hiding these drugs, it isn't near him."

"So the big three then? Guns, drugs and girls?"

Stuart nodded and tapped the pictures of Natovnia, Brecht and Bolt in turn. "Guns, drugs and girls. And the one common denominator," he stopped on the picture of Benjamin Holman. "His nightclub, the Harley Club."

"But he denies knowing anything is going on?"

"Yeah, he does. He says these three have been meeting there since he acquired the club from his brother eight months ago. Says he couldn't exactly kick them out. A likely story."

"You think he's connected?"

"I think he's too dumb to be connected, but he's certainly in this deeper than I think even he wants to be. But we scoured the nightclub too and there's nothing in his financial records, hidden cupboards, hell, he doesn't even have the usual nightclub business of dodgy alcohol suppliers and wife-beating heavies."

"That's it?"

Hayleigh shrugged. "After two weeks I was hoping for more too guv but we just keep missing something. Something big. Craig is always 10 steps ahead of us. We found Bolt and Trent because he wanted us to."

"What about what Samuel said?" Max spoke up. Eyes turned on him slowly. "He mentioned something in his interview on," Max frowned and tried to remember. "The 11th, the night of the Harley Club raid." He looked across at Hayleigh. This had come up earlier, Max and Hayleigh having spoken about it after the break-in at her place, and they were sure they had a name to go with the accusation. "He stated Natovnia knew someone in the police. We never put it in the Witness Protection files, just in case, but it was the real reason he went into protection."

Neil nodded and glanced at Superintendant Heaton. "I have the original recording. It was never filed away in the system but I do have the interview." Heaton nodded, understanding the fine line that officers had to walk in these situations, the precarious line that may lead to losing a case to Internal Investigations and accusing an innocent officer of corruption. "He never had anything else however. He never spoke of it again, despite many long hours by PC Brown."

"We think he may be on to something though." Hayleigh said, glancing at Max again, then frowning. "It's in regards to the break-in at my hostel. I think I know who was behind it and who the bent cop might be." She looked at Neil. "You know him. His name is DS Arthur Faison."