Dark Water (Detective Erika Foster 3)

He took a shower and then walked through to the small kitchen. On the table was a Glock 17 handgun, and £8000 in unmarked bank notes.

Gerry was smart and he could be greedy, but his intelligence told him that it was time to end this. His mobile phone rang on the table beside the cash. He picked it up.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ came the familiar voice. He was silent. ‘Are you there?’

‘I’m here.’ He replied.

‘You were supposed to do all three of them. Two suicides and a home invasion. Not only did you fail on the latter, but also the Foster woman will find out. She’s not stupid.’

‘I’m out,’ said Gerry.

‘What do you mean? You’re out? You need to finish the fucking job. I won’t pay you a penny more.’

‘Keep the rest of the money. I’m out.’

‘It’s not just the money, you know.’

‘You’ve been holding this over my fucking head for so long, and I’ve had enough. There’s two sides to every story and if I go down, so will you. I just realised I’ve nothing to lose by walking away.’

With that Gerry ended the call. He opened the pre-paid phone and took out the SIM card breaking it neatly into four.

He now had to move fast. He figured he had a day, maybe less before his DNA profile would come back, and he had to prepare his escape.

59

Erika sat across from Superintendent Yale in his office. He looked exhausted. His face was pale, and he had large dark circles under his eyes.

‘Sir. I don’t need you to divert any more resources my way,’ she said. He held up his hand,

‘Erika, I don’t think that stationing a police car outside the hotel you are staying at will break the bank. We’ve already had a stabbing in broad daylight on the front steps of the station and one of my officers has been found dead in suspicious circumstances. You’ve given me much bigger fish to fry… I take it you’ve heard about Jason Tyler?’

‘What is it?’

‘He was refused bail and taken to Belmarsh, someone heard he was going to give evidence for a plea bargain, and they got to him. He was stabbed in the leg with a shank.’

‘How did someone get hold of a shank?’

‘You’re not going to believe this. Kit Kats, or should I say the foil the two finger Kit Kats come wrapped in. Some bright spark has been saving them up for months and fashioned a lethal spiked shank with what must have been a few hundred foil wrappers. Tyler was stabbed in the thigh, bled out in the showers, and now his empire dies with him.’

There was a knock and one of the support staff came in with a cup of tea in his ‘Who’s The Boss?’ mug.

‘There we are, Sir,’ she said. ‘And I brought you your favourite.’ She placed a Kit Kat on the desk beside the steaming cup of tea and left.

Erika had a sudden urge to laugh, it took every bit of control to keep a straight face as he swept it off the desk and into the waste paper basket.

‘It seems it all hangs on you now, DCI Foster, let’s hope you get some kind of resolution to your case. I’ll have the car stationed outside your hotel in time for your return.’

‘Very good, Sir,’ said Erika. She got up and left and halfway down the corridor, she dived into the ladies toilets and she burst out laughing, she leaned on the sink and she couldn’t stop. A toilet flushed, and one of the uniformed officers came out of a cubicle and went to the sink. She was the one who had been collecting money for Guy Fawkes. She was ready for her shift, and wearing a Kevlar stab vest over her uniform.

‘You okay ma’am?’ she asked moving to the sink and washing her hands. Erika saw the vest, and immediately stopped.

‘Yes, sorry. It’s been a long hard day.’

‘It’s been a long hard week, ma’am,’ she said. She dried her hands and went to leave.

‘Be careful out there, won’t you…’ Erika found herself saying.

‘PC Claremont…’

‘PC Claremont, keep your wits about you.’

‘I always do. Thanks Boss,’ said the young officer and then left. Erika washed her hands and then went back up to the incident room.

* * *

Moss came over to her when she came through the door,

‘Boss, we’ve had DI Crawford’s phone records back, they confirm her was in contact with Amanda Baker over the last few weeks. We managed to find Amanda Baker’s phone. It had fallen down the side of her bed, so whoever was looking for it slipped up. The Cyber Crime guys have given it the once over and they found it was hacked in the last couple of weeks using a Trojan horse programme. Someone has been listening in and monitoring what she’s been looking at online.’

‘Good work.’

‘We just had some of our guys go back to the house, and they found a small listening device in the smoke alarm.’

‘Someone knew she was getting close to who killed Jessica Collins,’ said Erika.

60

Erika returned to the hotel in Dulwich and said an emotional goodbye to Lenka and the kids. It was dark outside and for once it wasn’t raining.

‘You know you’re welcome to stay,’ said Erika as they hugged on the street outside. Marek was waiting in the car with the kids.

‘Marek says things have calmed down, he’s sorted it with the police.’

‘If I was a police officer back in Slovakia, I wouldn’t be sorting things out with career criminals.’

‘I know.’

‘He loves you though, and the kids,’ said Erika watching as Marek helped them with their seat belts. ‘That’s got to count for something.’

Lenka shrugged, ’I just have to get on with life. I have to face up to whatever happens,’ she said.

‘You’ll keep in touch?’

‘Course,’ she smiled. ‘Let me know what happens with the hunky policeman.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘No. You deserve happiness. Mark would agree with me. You can’t spend the rest of your life in the past.’

‘Love you, safe journey,’ said Erika.

‘Love you too,’ replied Lenka.

She watched sadly as they drove away, the kids waving from the back window. She turned to see a squad car pull up at the kerb. She went over to it and knocked on the window, it wound down to show a young red haired officer.