One Dead Witness hc-3 Read online

  Kruger began to hiss steam. He wanted to overturn the table and rant and rave about injustice.

  ‘ Let me get this straight: he’s got away with anally raping — and probably kidnapping — an eleven-year-old girl, and you’re powerless to do anything about it?’

  ‘ You’re sayin’ we should force her to testify? The DA wouldn’t have any part in that, and you know it. A hostile witness, a terrified witness, and a kid at that. No way.’

  ‘ What about all my corroborative evidence? My team’s evidence? Surely that would go a long way to proving the case?’

  Tapperman uttered a snort of a laugh.

  ‘ What’s so goddam funny?’

  The detective raised a hand placatingly when he read Kruger’s face. ‘Hey, I ain’t laughin’ at your suggestion, buddy. It’s a good idea. Only thing is, Bussola’s legal team are goin’ to sue your ass for’ — here Tapperman began to count on his fingers — ‘unlawful entry, invasion of privacy, breakin’ an’ enterin’, unlawful arrest, assault and battery… you name it, he’s gonna try an’ plug ya.’

  ‘ Shit,’ breathed Kruger. His head dropped wearily. He had been very tired up to that point, but that extra bad news simply swamped him with weariness. ‘What about the other girl — the one he was beatin’ up on?’

  ‘ What girl’s that?’ Tapperman responded. ‘She’s gone, vamoose. Disparue. As soon as we turned our heads she was away. I think she was warned off, too.’

  Kruger rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He looked bitterly across the table at Tapperman, who shrugged apologetically. ‘So all in all, the Miami Police Department have made a complete fuck-up. Is it true to say that?’

  Tapperman nodded happily, feeling that an opposing viewpoint would have been detrimental to his health.

  ‘ Who was the other fat guy, the one who passed out? The one at the head end of the girl? The one who was forcing her to suck his cock?’

  Heads turned. Several touchy customers made ‘tutting’ noises.

  Tapperman coughed nervously. ‘A British guy, name of Charles Gilbert. One of Bussola’s, business associates in the leisure industry. Operates out of the north of England. The little we know about him suggests he’s clean. He was high as a kite but because Bussola acted so quickly we didn’t even get a chance to speak to him. Apparently he’s flying out early tomorrow, back to Manchester.’

  ‘ What a complete mess,’ Kruger groaned. He churned over the prospect of civil litigation together with the words Bussola had spieled out about having regrets. ‘Fuck that bitch Felicity for getting me into this.’

  Tapperman was vaguely aware of the reasons why Kruger had been watching the mobster. Gravely, he said, ‘If I were you I might be bothered about Felicity’s safety right now. If Mario adds this up and starts asking questions, he’ll get mightily pissed with her answers, I reckon.’

  Kruger’s eyelids snapped shut with an involuntary spasm as the implications of Tapperman’s words hit him. He hung his head despondently. ‘You’re right,’ he said quietly.

  Although Danny believed she had amassed enough evidence, most of which was hearsay, to recommend that Joe Lilton should be refused a firearms certificate, she did not succeed.

  She presented a very detailed report about Lilton’s ongoing violence towards his wife which had been logged over a period of several months. However, the powers-that-be decided it would be too much trouble and cost to refuse the application because if Lilton appealed against the decision he had immediate right of appeal to a Crown Court.

  In those days — the early 1980s — the ownership of firearms was not seen as too big a deal. The horror of Hungerford had yet to happen and the tragedy of Dunblane was completely unthinkable. People didn’t do such things, did they?

  Therefore Lilton got his certificate, got his guns — a thirty-eight and a forty-five — joined a gun club and to all intents and purposes, became a model gun-owner.

  Danny knew that not long after her visit to Lilton’s house in Osbaldeston, he and his wife split up and later divorced. Beyond that she knew nothing more — until now, here in the present, because she had bumped into Joe Lilton again.

  Remarried to Ruth — who seemed decent, if highly strung — and stepfather to Claire, runaway and deeply unhappy child.

  Nor was Danny happy. There was something at the back of her mind, niggling away. Something from all those years ago… yet she could not pinpoint it.

  At least she was up to date with Joe Lilton and feeling smug that the new government had decided to ban private ownership of handguns. In a couple of months’ time, Lilton, along with thousands of others, would be obliged to hand in his weapons to the police.

  She stretched her arms and sat back.

  It was eight o’clock. Time to go home.

  She had spent more or less the whole day at her desk — with the occasional excursion to research Joe Lilton — head down, beavering way, trying to clear her work so there would be no earthly reason for her ever to return to this office once she had been promoted.

  She had seen nothing of Jack Sands. He might have been in his office, might not. She did not care. All she wanted to do was forget him and the last couple of days, and get on with her life. Hopefully he had got the message and would leave her alone in future.

  When he walked into the office at that very moment, as cocky and cool as she had ever seen him, her heart juddered.

  Fortunately a couple of other people were in the office too.

  Sands addressed everyone.

  ‘ Just thought you’d like to be informed — for those who know him, that is — I’ve just received a preliminary message from Control Room.’ Here he looked directly at Danny. ‘And you’ll be very interested in this, Dan: Louis Vernon Trent has escaped from prison and in the process he killed two paramedics and a prison guard, and is suspected of a firebomb attack on another inmate’s cell which killed four people. He could well be making his way back to his home town. Here. Blackpool.’

  Danny gasped.

  That was all she needed.

  To Steve Kruger it seemed almost a lifetime ago since he had been walking across that parking lot, eagerly anticipating the planned barbecue and beer with his son and grandchildren. The barbecue had obviously been cancelled and they had all taken a raincheck. At least, for now, Kruger could achieve one of his ambitions, and that was to get his mouth round the neck of a bottle of Hurricane Reef Lager.

  He screeched the Chevy into the driveway of his Bal Harbour villa, gearing himself up to the coolness of the beer working its delicious way down his throat. He tapped in the alarm code and went in through the front door of his home, of which he was extremely proud.

  He tossed his jacket and tie onto the staircase, kicked off his shoes, and loosening everything else, made his way directly to the kitchen. He almost fainted with pleasure when he opened the refrigerator door and a burst of frozen air hit him. He stood there a few moments, basking. Then he grabbed a beer. A second later it tumbled down his neck like an ice-cold mountain stream.

  Most of the contents went down in that first pull.

  ‘ Jeez, that’s wonderful.’ He rolled the bottle across his sweaty forehead.

  Next he stripped off where he stood.

  He made his way through the living room, to the patio door which led out to the pool. He took a few steps across the hot concrete and dived naked into the water, secure in the knowledge the garden was not overlooked.

  He did a graceful length underwater, turned whilst submerged and swam back. With bursting lungs he surfaced at the point where he had entered.

  He did not expect to see the long black pair of female legs standing on the poolside, slightly astride. The view stopped him dead. He gulped, recognised them from previous discreet observation, and his eyes travelled slowly up them to see that the groin was covered by a pair of very tight shorts.

  He looked further up.

  There was a gap between the top of the shorts — exposing a lovely flat stomach with a be
lly button to die for — and a button T-shirt tied with a knot underneath the breasts.

  ‘ Myrna,’ Kruger said, puzzled. ‘What you doin’ here?’

  She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t sleep, I guess. Too much goin’ on in my head. Needed some sort of debrief. Mind if I join you?’

  ‘ Be my guest.’ He realised she must be able to see that he was completely naked.

  Myrna undid the knot in her T-shirt and dragged it over her head. She shimmied out of her shorts, discarding them and her panties to one side. Then, for one beautiful moment, as she raised her hands to a point above her head, Kruger was treated to a sight he had only ever dreamt about. He had to admit, the reality was far better than the imagination. The breasts tauter, the nipples bigger, the tummy flatter and the legs longer.

  She dived over him, and entered the pool with hardly a ripple.

  Kruger turned, ducked under the surface and pushed himself away from the poolside, wondering what form the debrief would take.

  Everything going on in Danny’s life at that moment seemed to be connected with ghosts from her past. People she thought had been laid to rest.

  First there was Joe Lilton, from fifteen years ago.

  Then Jack Sands, a nightmare from her very recent past.

  Now here was Louis Vernon Trent a mere nine years in her past.

  Trent had been the first major criminal Danny had ever arrested and put away for a long time. She had locked up plenty of burglars and petty drugs dealers but Trent had been her first biggie. He wasn’t a master criminal in the usual sense of the phrase. He wasn’t driven by greed or the need to show off. He was driven by a perverted and uncontrollable lust. Mainly for young girls and occasionally for boys.

  Because of this he was considered a danger to the public.

  That was why Trent was a biggie.

  His arrest had been Danny’s passport to any specialist department she chose. She plumped for Family Protection because she felt it was the area in which she could do most good.

  It had probably been the near-fatal injuries caused by Trent to two young girls in one frenzied attack that had driven Danny in the direction of the FPU. It gave her a burning desire to catch and convict people like Trent who ruined young lives without a thought for anything but their own sadistic pleasures.

  Trent had been sentenced to seventeen years’ imprisonment, with the Judge’s recommendation he serve the full term.

  It wasn’t enough for Danny, but it would have to do.

  Seventeen years did not give back to even one of those girls the chance of enjoying a healthy family life when she reached adulthood. Nor did it give the other little girl the chance of ever going to the toilet and not screaming in agony. Nor did it repay the other thirty children he had molested in a reign of terror lasting eighteen months.

  But seventeen years would have to do, because the justice system said so.

  Seventeen years for thirty-two ruined lives.

  Now he was back on the streets, no doubt with the intention of resuming his activities.

  Danny shivered at the thought.

  She prayed he would not return to Blackpool, but knowing he probably would — because he had unfinished business to attend to — Danny decided that tomorrow she would make it her task to ensure every police officer within a twenty-mile radius of Blackpool was carrying an up-to-date photo of Trent.

  Danny left her desk and walked to the lift. Whilst waiting for its creaky arrival, she stared blandly at the buttons, picturing Trent’s evil eyes.

  Hearing clearly the voice that went with them. At the conclusion of one of Danny’s interviews with Trent, nine years before, he had said, quite blatantly at a point when Danny’s interviewing partner had left the room briefly, ‘Guilty or not guilty, Danny, one fine day I’m going to come back and kill you for this.’

  Her partner came back into the room to find Trent smiling pleasantly at him, then at Danny for whom he added a salacious wink.

  She had nearly wet herself there and then, because she believed him.

  The lift arrived, the doors slid open, she stepped in and pressed the ground-floor button. The doors began to close.

  At eighteen inches apart, Jack Sands contorted sideways through the gap and a second later the doors were shut. Only he and Danny were in the lift.

  She cowered away from him in the confined space.

  ‘ Danny, I need to talk to you.’ He held out his arms. His face had a look of total desperation and misery on it.

  ‘ Get away from me, Jack,’ she warned him. ‘I’ll knee you in the balls again.’

  ‘ Whoa, okay, honey. But we need to talk. You know I love you and I know you love me. You’re denying yourself. I need you and you need me, so let’s stop pretending and get back to what we were.’

  ‘ It’s over,’ Danny stated through gritted teeth. ‘Now leave me alone.’

  The lift clattered to a halt at the ground floor.

  ‘ Please, God, let there be someone waiting to get in,’ Danny grovelled in her mind. Sands’s finger was pressed on the button for the fifth floor and he was standing across the doors. He wasn’t going to let her go anywhere.

  Danny’s legs became wobbling strips of blubber when she thought that somehow Sands had succeeded in preventing the doors opening. An agonising couple of seconds passed. She eyed her ex-lover fearfully

  … until, thankfully, the doors opened. Several people were in the corridor, waiting to get in. A gush of relief flushed through her system.

  Sands glanced over his shoulder, a look of rage on his face. Danny took advantage of the moment to duck past him, shove her way through the waiting people with a strained, ‘Excuse me,’ and head for the exit.

  Her legs, having turned back from blubber into muscle, carried her swiftly down the corridor, past the entrance to the custody office, out of the back door and into the rear yard.

  Head high, vision tunnelled, she commenced what had become a very long walk to her car.

  She sensed, rather than saw, felt or heard, Sands by her shoulders. Walking with her. Slightly behind.

  ‘ Fuck off, Jack,’ she hissed without turning her head.

  ‘ We haven’t finished.’ He sounded breathless. ‘You can’t cut me out like this, Dan. It’s not on. You owe me more.’ His voice was pleading and threatening at the same time.

  She refused to rise and make a reply, and carried on walking. As she wheeled into the parking area where her car was parked, she saw it was dark, badly lit. Making a quick decision, she stopped abruptly and spun to face Jack.

  ‘ Don’t come to my car, Jack. I’ve let what happened pass, but I’m not prepared to do that again. Next time you touch me, you’ll get locked up. I won’t have any hesitation whatsoever — and if you want the hassle of our affair finding its way to your wife’s ears, then so be it.’

  Sands said nothing, simply stared unemotionally at her.

  She nodded quickly and made towards her car. The walk seemed to take an hour. Each footfall reverberated around her skull. All the time expecting Sands to pounce and drag her to the floor.

  Nothing happened. She reached the car unmolested, but her hands were trembling wickedly.

  Next thing she was reversing out of her spot, engaging ‘D’ and driving out of the car park.

  Sands lounged against a wall near to the exit. He was holding his right fist out towards her. The consideration of running the bastard down quickly entered her head. As she drew alongside him, he opened the fingers of his fist, showing Danny the palm of his hand… in which was a Mercedes three-pointed star.

  Danny’s foot rammed down on the gas. The car surged ahead with a squeal of tyres. She gunned out of the yard, glancing fleetingly in her rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of Sands’s face. He was laughing uproariously.

  Danny yelled something incomprehensible as the implication of what she had seen smacked her with the force of a slab of concrete coming through her windscreen.

  It was now confirmed. Jack Sands was t
he person responsible for smashing her bedroom window, nearly causing her serious injury and damaging her beloved car.

  Sands turned on his heels and slid the badge into his pocket. He walked back into the police station, a smirk of superiority on his face.

  He failed to notice the lurking figure of Henry Christie in the dark shadow next to the police van.

  ‘ That was a one-off — two-off, actually, I suppose — but having said that, it was definitely the nicest two-off I’ve ever experienced,’ Myrna Rosza admitted to Steve Kruger. ‘It can’t happen again. It’s just that we seem to have gone through so much together in such a short space of time that my head was spinning with it all. I needed some sorta relief… but with someone who understood.’

  Kruger uttered a kind of reply from deep in his throat.

  He understood completely. It was one of the reasons why so many cop marriages failed. Non-cop partners didn’t fully comprehend some of the situations and emotions that only other cops could. Usually those of the opposite sex, although not necessarily so. Too often, when he’d been a cop, he’d found himself in similar situations, one of which was responsible for the demise of his first marriage.

  Kruger and Myrna were lying askew his king-size bed. He was on his back, an arm thrown lazily around Myrna’s wonderfully soft-brown shoulders. She was tucked under his armpit, his fingers playfully curling the thick hairs on his chest.

  Their legs were entwined, toes playing with each other’s toes. The heat of Myrna’s sex pumped against his thigh.

  It had been incredible.

  From the shallow end of the swimming pool, right through the house, taking a few moments to dry each other off before hitting the sack. Then an unbelievable fuck in the greatest tradition of the word.

  Even though all the time he had been telling himself what a stupid fool he was being.

  Firstly by breaking rule number one — never ever fraternise with the staff.

  Secondly because he knew Ben Rosza, Myrna’s husband. A soft, gentle man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. A decent hardworking doctor who Kruger quite liked and whose wife had just mounted him from several directions.