Dancing to a New Beat 31

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CHAPTER 31
My safety training was kicking in, and I knew in the back of my mind that I was already firing off target acquisition glances, seeking the right place to hit first, who to attack as a priority, but the rational part of me was folding quickly in fear and certainty. I was dead.

I rose from the block I was sitting on. The pub was too far away, and there were no lights in the Norwegian church. The four huge men were too well-spaced to allow me to have any chance of making a run for it, and I had no kit with me. Dead.

A dog walker appeared off in the distance, but another of the group appeared from the shadows, intercepted him and sent him back the way he had come, in some haste. I turned back to the one in front of me.

“Why do you want to know who I am?”

“I know who you are already, Detective Constable. I just want a little chat with you. Sit down”

“Why?”

“Sit. Down”

He moved past me, and to my surprise took a seat himself, waving a hand at the block next to him.

“I simply want to talk to you, Diane. Please sit. My brothers will give us some privacy. That’s all. Sit”

I sank back down, and he nodded. In the dim light, I could see a squat barrel of a man, and as the tree branches moved in the breeze, light caught his face. He looked to be in his forties or early fifties, greying hair to the shoulders, and sometime in the past he had been struck in the face by something like the edge of a spade. His nose was folded right in, with a clear groove across it. I suspected the damage done to anyone involved in delivering that wound might have been rather more severe.

He was in leather jacket and jeans, with a leather jerkin over the jacket, cloth patches sewn to its front. Look and memorise, woman, but don’t make it too obvious. The badge on one side was diamond-shaped, and read ‘1%’, while the opposite side depicted a snarling boar’s head, though no real boar had ever had a mouthful of such sharp and clearly carnivorous teeth.

They were from the Culhwch MC, then. What the hell did they want with me? I couldn’t see them having any connections to the Evans family, for a start. The big man rumbled something else I missed, and he coughed, and I realised it hadn’t just been his nose that had received the damage.

“You know Posh Paula”

A flat statement, not a question, and I knew instantly who he meant, so I nodded, once. Bugger negotiation.

“Yes, I know Paula. She’s a friend, and some bastard on a bike shot her. Is that what all this amateur dramatic shit is about?”

He coughed again, and I realised it was actually laughter.

“Moira said you were a feisty bitch, and I see she was right. What have you done to find the cunt?”

I looked round to his mates, brothers, companions, to see one of them turn a jogger round to send them off the way they had come, then looked back at the obvious leader.

“How do you know my friends?”

“You know who we are. You know what we are”

Not questions in any way whatsoever, and he continued what was in essence a confession of organised criminality that stopped just short of useful detail.

“The girls bring in the punters, and we don’t mind that. It’s good for our business, and that we like. The pimps, owners, whatever they call themselves, they behave on our turf or we educate them, and we educate any punters that get out of line. Those girls are our girls, in the end, and jumped-up fuckshits do not go around shooting our girls. It’s criminal damage to our property, and it is bad for our business. It brings your lot around, for starters”

I looked at him, trying to gauge his meaning.

“That what this is all about? Your bloody income?”

He tilted his head to one side, staring at me, the break in his nose now in deep shadow.

“There is that, but it’s not all. We don’t like people with shooters who shouldn’t have them. And, well, I like the girl. She’s got class, for a whore, even if she’s loved up with that copper”

Another coughing laugh.

“Actually, I quite like Paul as well. He’s as straight as you ever find. No bullshit, no sneaking about shit. He looks after people. I can live with that. But nobody fucking shoots people on our patch and walks again. So listen carefully, Detective Constable Sutton, and yes, we do know where you live, but don’t worry. You know the park by the Castle?”

“Bute Park? Of course”

“You will not stake it out. You will not put coppers there. You WILL expect a delivery sometime next week”

“when?”

“Oh, fuck off, woman! You should know better than to ask that!”

He rumbled another coughing laugh, then abruptly stood, and my reflexes kicked in again, jerking me to my feet, but he held up a casual hand.

“Calm down, girl. Now, tell me: how is Posh?”

I shrugged.

“As well as can be expected. Seems to be recovering; bloody good job the gun was apparently a shit one”

“Aye, it was. There’s a hollow tree in Splott Park, by the bike track”

He turned, and I sank back down in relief as he started to walk away. Just as I thought it was at an end, he stopped and called back over his shoulder.

“And Diane?”

“Yeah?”

“Give our regards to that little cunt Joe Evans”

He shambled away, his brothers converging with them, and for some reason I left my phone in my bag until the thunder of their bikes had faded into the distance. I had to dial three times before I could control the sudden shaking in my hands. Let there be someone in the office, please.

“Patel!”

“Oh, thank fuck!”

“Di? What’s up?”

“Can’t give details just now, Sammy. Just been handed a load of info. We need someone with firearms training down to Splott, by the swimming pool, yeah? There’s meant to be a hollow tree by the bike track”

“Where has this come from?”

“Not now, Sammy. I’m on my way in, not far off. Tell you more when I can”

Round to James Street, buzzed in and straight to the office, Sammy waiting with Rhys and Rob, faces full of concern, so I took a moment to pour myself a cup of tea. Calm the shakes down, DC Sutton. Police, professional. Calming breaths.

“Boys, I was followed tonight. I thought I was going to be face down in the Bay, to be honest, but all he wanted was a talk”

Sammy was direct.

“Who, Di?”

“Not going to say, just now. All I need to tell you… All I feel I can tell you is that Paula’s shooting has pissed off a lot of people, and one of them intends to give us a hand. I suspect there’s a package in the tree, so we need to get there sharpish. We should also expect a delivery, I was told. What of, fuck knows, though I have a suspicion”

Sammy turned to the other two.

“Pick up the necessary kit and get down there. Take a dog unit, firearms dog, you know the score, and tee up SOCO. If the weapon is there, I want it along with anything else you can find. Now, please”

That was Sammy in firm boss mode, but as soon as Rhys and Rob were out of the door he dropped back into the gentler man I knew and loved.

“Di? What can you tell me? I am guessing there’s a lot more to this than you feel you can tell us?”

“Spot on, Sammy. I was followed, and while one of them spoke to me, his mates set up what was effectively a security cordon. Very, very efficiently. My man knows Paula, and I think he has a soft spot for her”

I concentrated on the steam from my cup for a few seconds.

“Simply put, they have business in the area. They see the girls as a positive asset for their earnings. What happened to Paula has pissed them off. And one of them knows Joe Evans”

Sammy’s eyebrows went up in an ‘Oh, really?’ expression, and then he nodded, sharply.

“I take your point, mate. And I believe I know who we are both talking about. How many of them did you see?”

“Four, at first, but there were others further off”

“You must have been shitting yourself, knowing the boys I believe we are talking about”

“I was, Sammy”

“No shame there, mate, no shame at all. It was a spade, by the way”

“Eh?”

“Got the edge across his face, the handle across his neck, and ten years for manslaughter, and that is all either of us need to know. Delivery?”

“Yeah. They said we should stay away from Bute Park, but expect there to be something left for us next week”

“OK. It goes against my nature, but my instincts are telling me to leave it alone and wait. Now go home. I’ll let you know what we get”

I didn’t sleep that well, not telling my man anything for some reason, and I am sure I kept him awake, but both Blake and I were in bright and early the next morning. We had a full team for once, even Rhys and Rob doing a quick turnaround, and Sammy called us into a briefing as soon as we had grabbed a cuppa each.

“Right, mates. Things have moved on in a big way. Blake, did Di fill you in?”

My husband stared at me.

“Fill me in about what?”

I sighed. “Sorry, love. I just needed us to get some sleep, and if I had told you, well, neither of us would have got any”

Candice snorted.

“Yeah, well, seeing as you two produced that little bundle of joy, you must have lost a lot of sleep anyway”

Sammy let the laughter die down before raising a hand.

“Serious heads on, please. Di? Bare essentials?”

I quickly looked at Blake, and he gave my knee a squeeze of reassurance.

“Er, boys and girls… sorry. In short form, I was followed last night so someone could talk to me. They offered us a package last night, and a delivery in a few days. That’s all from me”

Jon looked up.

“Who was it, Di?”

“No, Jon. Need to know. For once, REALLY need to know”

Sammy held up his hand once more.

“Rhys? Rob?”

Rhys smiled, and held up a file.

“We went over to Splott last night, on Di’s info, and we took a sniffer dog and SOCO. We now have what we believe is the weapon involved in Paula’s shooting”

There were a number of comments, many of them very rude, but they were all in celebration. Blake took my hand again, smiled, and turned back to Sammy.

“What do we have, Sammy? Is that need to know as well?”

“Nope, not that bit. Rhys?”

“Aye. We have a replica Police Special or whatever the yanks call them. A 38 snubnose. It’s a good quality piece for a replica, decent materials, and it’s been modified for live rounds, though I suspect it will only fire one rather than a full set of five, and before you ask, not all revolvers are ‘six-shooters’. SOCO are doing tests on it, but they have confirmed it’s been fired recently, and I believe the round recovered from Paula will match our little toy. Shit weapon, short barrel, poor gas sealing from the modification, but still lethal, or potentially”

Sammy smiled.

“Thanks, mate. One question? Anything on site to dig into? Any leads of any kind?

“Sod-all, Sammy. Just the weapon”

“I suspected that might be the case. Nothing for us until this delivery, whatever that mean. I am afraid, then, that it will be our usual grind getting through the backlog of other cases, while we, well, await developments, as they say”

That was it, then. An eternity of terror the previous evening, and now, at least in my case, a set of disclosure schedules to complete. I went back to our drinks table, and Blake followed, laying an arm over my shoulder for a quick hug.

“It’s all right, love. If you felt you couldn’t tell me right off, it will have been for good reasons, so don’t worry. Anyway, we need to think about presents. Not just your mam and Dad, but we’ve got Tammy and Bridget coming over, and I feel we should give a little something to the House, Deb’s place that is, and I really think we should have a little something to give to the Sedakas when they come for dinner”

Reminding me of my old mistake got me smiling, so I hugged him back as the day brightened with the love of my very good man, and of the people working round me.

Three days later, we had our delivery, and it was savage. A young couple, only in their late teens, had called it in, and I suspect that if they were in the park for amorous reasons the mood had been well and truly broken. Blake and I were there just behind the ambulances, but there was enough left of the scene to tell us all we needed.

It was in the middle of the circle of standing stones, and it was three men, two of them very young. All three had their hands bound behind them, and had been left on the raised stone platform in the middle of the circle. They hadn’t been able to walk off for the brutally simple reason that all six legs had been broken below the knee. Their other injuries were multiple, to say the least.

I felt sick, seeing that face again in my memory, the spade cut over the nose, hearing that coughing laughter.

There was a notice fastened across the square picture-frame thing by the stones, made from a simple bed sheet and written in a rusty brown ink I knew came from one or more of the three injured men.

“They pissed off the wrong people”

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Comments

Terrifying Experience

joannebarbarella's picture

Diane did well to hold it together while the bikie "interviewed" her. Real criminals who are not scared of the cops can be totally terrifying. In this instance they were making common cause but such encounters are no less scary.

So now we have the perpetrators of the attack on Paula and it will be interesting to find out who they were and what their motive was. Apparently they won't be walking away any time soon. The weapon used in the murder attempt is also in the right hands.

I wonder how the police will deal with all this.

“They pissed off the wrong people”

i guess so. not too sure I like someone like shovel-face out there, even if he's being useful at the moment. A thug is one thing, but this guy knows tactics, which makes him very scary ...

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Shovel-face

Drawn very much from life, and most definitely a frightening person.

Relationships?

The old saying goes, keep your friends close and your enemies closer - trouble is shovel face and co are friends one would rather not have, let alone keep close.

Thanks Steph.

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