‘Having breakfast upstairs.’
‘Can I come and see you?’
‘Have I done something wrong?’ the officer wanted to know.
‘No, no — just want a word with you about a job you dealt with a while back.’
Henry smiled. Bobbies always thought it was bad news when a senior officer wanted to talk to them. The thing was, he thought, that he felt exactly the same when a more senior officer beckoned him in, so things didn’t change, no matter what rank you got to, unless you got to the top — but then again, you got the police authority and Home Office on your back, so no escape.
Before leaving the office Henry dialled another number on the TETRA on the off chance and also got through. Wonders were never going to cease, he mused.
‘Rik, it’s me, Henry Christie — I need a chat about something.’
‘I’m up at Blackpool Victoria Hospital re the incident at McDonald’s at the moment,’ Rik Dean said. ‘I’ll be up here another hour at least, I reckon, boss.’
‘Okay. I might come up and see you if I get chance.’
Henry stood up, slung on his jacket and made his way to the canteen where he found PC Dave Watts tucking into a full, very unhealthy-looking breakfast. Henry knew him by sight. He paid for a mug of decaf coffee and joined him at the table.
‘Hello, sir,’ the PC said. He eyed Henry with suspicion and seemed to lose his appetite.
Henry hated being called ‘sir’, but he let it ride. Sometimes it was too much trouble to put folk right.
‘You’re not in any sort of bother,’ he reiterated.
The young man breathed a sigh of relief, took a sip of his tea and pulled his plate back towards him.
‘About six months ago you arrested someone for a public order offence outside the Palace nightclub?’
Watts’ eyebrows knitted together. ‘Did I?’
‘Probably one of dozens you’ve arrested,’ Henry conceded. ‘His name was Marty Cragg.’
‘Yeah, I remember him. Very hard work, bit of a bastard. A hard nut.’
‘What were the circumstances of the arrest?’
‘He rolled out of the club arguing with a woman. Right in front of us, he was. We were stood outside the club. They walked away, still arguing, then suddenly he turned on her and knocked her to the ground and, started kicking her. We intervened and locked him up. He should’ve been done for assault, but she wouldn’t make a complaint, so we ended up doing him for public order.’
‘Do you know who Marty Cragg is?’
The officer nodded. ‘Big time. Unfortunately he’s got a small-time temperament.’
‘Who was the girl?’
‘Dunno, she refused to give us details. She spoke with a strange accent, bit like Russians do in James Bond films.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ Henry finished his decaf.
‘That it?’
‘That’s it,’ Henry said. ‘Cheers.’
Karl Donaldson had once been a brilliant FBI field agent, working mainly in Florida from the Miami Field Office. His investigations had resulted in numerous convictions of top-flight felons as well as serial killers, bombers and rapists. He had enjoyed pitting his wits and skills against such people. But for over four years, Donaldson had not officially been on the streets, other than for occasional forays into the front line. Instead he had been ensconced in the American embassy in Grosvenor Square in London where he worked on the Legal Attache Program, created to help foster good will and gain greater cooperation with international police partners. The FBI believes it is essential to station highly skilled special agents in countries other than America to help prevent terrorism and crime from reaching across borders and harming Americans in their homes and workplaces.
It was a wonderful job, very fulfilling and rewarding. Donaldson was settled, married to an English woman with two young children, and commuting every day into London from a little village in Hampshire called Hartley Wintney. He loved his work. He met many interesting people, got involved in many wide-ranging investigations which crossed international boundaries, but spent lots of time behind a desk, pushing paper.
In truth, he did miss working in the field. Sometimes he hankered for it so much it drove his wife, who was a police officer based at the Police Staff College in Bramshill, bananas.
So what he did to alleviate this hankering was get his hands dirty from time to time, though theoretically this was a no-no.
One of the tasks he had taken on, so as to keep himself as close as possible to the sharp end, was to coordinate the activities of undercover FBI field agents operating in Europe. The general public would have been surprised by the number of agents working across the continent, but following the terrible terrorist incidents in America, the FBI had become more pro-active in infiltrating terrorist organizations worldwide. But their work was not solely focused on the terrorist, they also had a number of agents in criminal gangs in Europe too.
Donaldson enjoyed his time briefing, debriefing and staying in contact with his agents. He thought they were fantastically brave people who, without exception, made light of the dangers they faced each and every day, without, of course, underestimating them.
There were currently four agents in organized criminal gangs and Donaldson had responsibility for all of them, including an agent whose code name was Zeke.
Donaldson was a big, burly guy. Six-three, fifteen stone but with not an ounce of excess fat on him. He kept himself fit by daily runs and gym visits three times a week, as well as expending an equal amount of energy chasing his two young sons round his garden and his wife round the bedroom.
He was standing by the window in his office, sipping water from a disposable conical paper cup, looking out across Grosvenor Square but his mind was not on the view.
He smiled absently at one of the secretaries who walked past him. She was a very pretty English lady, secretly crazy about Donaldson, but his mind was not on her swaying ass.
Although no longer a field agent, Donaldson prided himself on the fact that his sharp instincts had not been blunted by desk work and sexual harassment from the staff. He knew he was as keen as ever in the brain department. Which is why, as he tossed the paper cup into the waste bin, he knew something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Henry was doing his best to avoid bumping into Jane Roscoe, although he knew it was inevitable they would soon come face to face. He resolved to tell her that their fling was over and that from now on the relationship would be purely professional and platonic. Yeah, he could do that. After all, it was only words, wasn’t it? One of the best things that could happen to him was to be taken off the Blackpool jobs and given something else to deal with at the far end of the county which would consume him for about six months. A mass murder, or something. He found himself praying for something like this to happen on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border.
Back in the office, he logged into his e-mail and found that the intelligence unit had sent him details of Marty Cragg’s convictions and the stories behind them. He printed them off and looked round, realizing that, in hindsight, it had been a mistake to share an office with Jane. He used his TETRA radio to contact Rik Dean to tell him he would be with him within quarter of an hour.
Henry left quickly to avoid meeting Jane. He was running scared.
Karl Donaldson had worked with Zeke before when both had been field agents in Miami. Zeke’s real name was Carlos Hiero. His parents had emigrated from Spain and settled in Florida in the early 1960s and had developed a fairly successful flower-selling business with about six shops dotted around the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area. They were not ultra-wealthy, but were well off and comfortable. On leaving university Zeke had become a lawyer, then joined the FBI at the age of twenty-six, when his Spanish origins meant he was used to great effect in combating Hispanic crime gangs.
He and Donaldson, although never working partners, had colluded closely on a number of cases with some good results.