Chapter 47
‘Can’t sleep?’ She scoots closer to him, resting her head against his chest as she squints at her screen.
‘Nothing from the surveillance team,’ Fraser says.
‘Might have something on phones, though.’ Lauren chucks her own on the bed. ‘The analyst wants to see me first thing.’
‘Will you push to arrest Ellis tomorrow?’
‘Today, you mean? A hundred per cent. If Ellis knows where New Dawn plans to plant explosives, we have to get that information out of him – there’s no time to waste.’ She throws back the covers. ‘I’m giving up on sleep. Coffee?’
Fraser swings his legs out of bed with a groan. ‘Make it a strong one.’
By seven, Lauren has had five cups of coffee and her brain is crackling with static. She’s sitting in the analyst’s office, struggling to make sense of a spreadsheet packed with telephone numbers.
‘Each page shows the phones that were in the vicinity of a New Dawn meeting from fifteen minutes before it began to fifteen minutes afterwards,’ the analyst says.
He clicks rapidly through the pages. ‘The greyed-out numbers are linked to a single meeting, those highlighted in yellow correlate with two meetings, pink with three, purple with four . . .’
Just as Lauren is starting to feel dizzy, the scrolling numbers stop dead. In the centre of the screen is a phone number with a thick black box around it. She looks at the analyst. ‘What’s so special about that one?’
‘That number appears in the vicinity of every New Dawn meeting we know about, which means there’s a high probability it belongs to someone attending. And luckily for us – ’ the analyst taps his pen lid against the number ‘ – it’s not a burner phone. It’s on a contract.’
Lauren’s heart leaps. ‘Do you know who it belongs to?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you thought about telling your face?’ Lauren grins. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to have a bit of good news. It was starting to feel as though we’d never get a breakthrough.’
‘You won’t feel like that in a minute.’
‘What do you mean?’
He minimizes the spreadsheet and clicks on a different document. ‘As soon as we got a name, Intel did the usual checks – PNC, intel, some open source.’ The document opens, and Lauren takes in the photograph of the man on the screen, captioned with his name, address and last known occupation.
‘Shit,’ Lauren says.
‘Police officer. Ex-police officer, technically,’ the analyst adds, ‘although he only retired a year ago. His name’s Mike Bishop.’
‘Is he one of ours?’ Not that it will make any difference to the public, Lauren knows. A bad apple is a bad apple, no matter what barrel it’s in.
‘Detective inspector in the Met. Moved here when he left the job. And if you compare his photo to our so-called DI Burton . . .’ The analyst brings up the e-fit and drags the corners so it’s the same size as Bishop’s photograph, then positions them side by side. The similarities are striking.
‘No wonder he was so convincing.’ Lauren can’t stop staring at the two images; at the narrow eyes, the full moustache.
She thinks of Nadeeka arriving home to find her world destroyed, putting her trust in the very man who had destroyed it.
She thinks about the damage done to the police’s reputation – damage which could take generations to undo – and she feels a wave of anger so intense it pushes her out of her chair. ‘Who knows this information?’
‘Just you and Intel at the moment.’
‘Keep it that way. I’ll ask Fraser to put an arrest team together.’
She finds him coming back from the kitchen, three over-full mugs of coffee in each hand.
‘Don’t let me have one of those,’ Lauren says.
‘I’m operating at a level of caffeine that should probably be illegal.
’ She fills him in on this latest development.
Fraser’s eyes narrow as he learns that Mike Bishop was a serving police officer, his jaw taut with barely contained anger.
Lauren gets it. No one hates corrupt cops more than other cops. ‘Hard to stomach, isn’t it?’
Fraser gives a tight nod. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘I want arrest teams ready to go in an hour. I’d prefer to do a dawn knock, but we can’t afford to lose any more time; I’m worried Bishop will get wind of what’s going on.
The DNA hit on the cleaning rags gives us enough to bring in Chris Morley, and, given he and Alan Ellis come as a pair, we should do the arrests simultaneously.
Stratman’s just going to have to lump it. ’
‘Three arrest teams, then?’ Fraser says. ‘Let me get shot of these, and I’ll put them together. Team two are on earlies this week – they’re a good bunch. And I’m thinking Kenric and Matt?’
‘Sonya,’ Lauren says. ‘Leave Matt out of this one.’
Fraser raises an eyebrow. ‘So you do think—’
‘Let’s just get these three nicked,’ Lauren says, calmly but firmly. ‘Fast.’
They gather for a briefing in the back yard an hour later, police vans parked on three sides of a square, their doors pulled back so the arrest teams can see Lauren and DI Stratman.
‘Radio up when you’re in position,’ Lauren says, ‘but wait for my signal before going in. Team one, Chris Morley’s due to start work at nine, so get the factory foreman on-side and you should be in and out with no drama.
Teams two and three: it’s big red key time.
’ The heavy metal enforcers will make short work of the doors Lauren has already scoped out on Google Street View, minimising the risk of Mike Bishop and Alan Ellis disposing of crucial evidence.
‘Did the surveillance throw up anything, boss?’ Bahnaz asks.
Lauren defers to Stratman. It irks her that she capitulated yesterday when they could have had Ellis in the traps overnight. She should have stood her ground.
‘Ellis’s behaviour changed an hour or so after surveillance started,’ Stratman says. ‘He began looking over his shoulder, crossing the road unnecessarily . . . behaviours common with individuals who know they’re being followed.’
‘Do you think he was given the nod?’ Kenric asks.
‘It seems that way.’ Stratman flips open the cover of an iPad and swipes through a series of photographs.
‘He was approached in the pub on Wednesday evening by a man who seemed to know him, and Ellis was visibly uncomfortable. Couldn’t get away quick enough.
’ He turns the tablet around. ‘We lost him soon after that; we think he switched jackets with another man,’ Stratman is saying, but Lauren’s attention is on the man seen talking to Ellis.
Sonya’s jaw drops. ‘Isn’t that thumb-man?’
‘Scott Hadley,’ Lauren translates, in case Stratman has expunged the memory of Sonya’s peri-menopausal dating woes. ‘Nadeeka Prasanna’s ex-husband.’ What had Hadley been doing talking to Ellis?
As the arrest teams make their way to their respective locations, Lauren messages Nadeeka. Just checking in. How are you doing?
The usual breakfast chaos, Nadeeka replies, but I’m okay. Scott’s taking the girls to school today, so I can get to work early. I’m running a recruitment event at the weekend and things are getting busy.
Lauren’s tension eases slightly now that she knows Nadeeka will be safe at work all day, and Maya and Nish at school. In the meantime, Lauren can get Ellis into interview and establish whether Scott Hadley is part of New Dawn.
Mike Bishop lives in a detached Victorian villa with a gravel drive and a hundred-foot garden, at the end of which two uniformed officers have been stationed.
There are patrol cars waiting at either end of the residential street, and two taser-trained officers in an unmarked van with Lauren and Fraser.
Five miles away, at the car parts factory at which Chris Morley is a machine operator, a second arrest team is waiting for the nod, with the third team poised near Alan Ellis’s door.
Lauren watches Kenric and Sonya walk towards Bishop’s gravel drive, then she presses the transmit button on her radio. ‘Arrest teams: go!’
At the Victorian villa, a uniformed officer swings the enforcer. There’s an almighty bang, and a second one, then the door smashes open. The arrest team charge in. In the van, Lauren and Fraser wait impatiently.
‘I hope he’s not out,’ Fraser says.
‘His car’s on the drive,’ Lauren says – she has already confirmed that the black Mazda is registered to Bishop – but now Kenric is coming out of the villa, shaking his head. ‘Damn!’ She pulls back the van door.
‘The neighbour’s talking to him,’ Fraser says.
They watch as a woman in gym clothes, arms hugged tight to her body, walks closer to the fence separating the two driveways.
A minute, maybe two, and then the neighbour’s going back inside, and Kenric and Sonya are crossing the street to the van, and it’s clear from their faces that it’s not good news.
‘The neighbour saw him half an hour ago getting into a taxi,’ Kenric says. ‘He had two large suitcases with him.’
‘Holiday?’ Fraser says hopefully.
‘Negative result at Hex Precision.’ The officer’s voice crackles through everyone’s radio simultaneously. ‘Chris Morley didn’t turn up to work today. His housemate works here too – says he didn’t come home last night.’
Lauren is about to ask for an update from the arrest team at Ellis’s home address when they call it in.
‘No sign of occupancy, ma’am.’
‘Shit,’ Fraser says, his face echoing how Lauren’s feeling. Sure, Bishop could have been taking his suitcases on holiday, but the timing’s a hell of coincidence. First Ellis, now Bishop and Morley.
Someone’s tipped them off.