Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hamza stood at the podium, sweaty hands gripping tightly to the sides as he looked out across the sea of expectant faces.
Ben had just had time to whisper an instruction to picture them all naked before Hamza had been forced to take his place in the centre of the stage.
Thanks to that suggestion, he was now desperately trying not to imagine a sea of wrinkled bare flesh spread out before him.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t having much luck.
‘So, um, aye. Thanks,’ he began, but he was far too close to the microphone, so all that emerged was a robotic-sounding roar that crackled and hissed over the speakers.
He drew back a bit, cleared his throat, and tried again.
‘Sorry. Technology, eh?’ he said, and while that joke had absolutely killed when Sergeant Fleck made it, it now clanged in the booming silence.
He swallowed. The microphone picked it up and broadcast it around the entire hall. When he looked over at Ben for support, the former DI stood frozen, a biscuit pinched between two fingers and held motionless in his tea.
‘You’re doing great.’
The words were a whisper from Hamza’s right. Sergeant Fleck stood with his hands crossed behind his back. He gave the DI a nod of encouragement, then smiled out at the room at large.
Hamza knew he shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be on this stage, shouldn’t be in this room. Shouldn’t be in this job, maybe. There was so much to do, so much to learn, so many differences between this role and the last.
A man was dead.
An investigation was in full swing.
And he was holding an envelope with stars drawn on the front.
He should’ve seen Mitchell’s email. He should’ve read that memo. Maybe then, he’d have written a speech. Or, ideally, found a way to get out of the whole bloody thing.
But he didn’t. He hadn’t. He wasn’t ready.
Maybe for any of it.
He wasn’t speaking, he realised. Nobody was. The whole hall was silent. Expectant. Waiting.
For him.
A little voice in Hamza’s head screamed at him to say something, to just say something, to say anything.
‘I, eh… I don’t really know what I’m doing.’
The words came from nowhere, so out of the blue that Hamza started to glance around to see who had said them, before realising it had been him.
Grey eyebrows frowned in confusion all around the floor. Heads tilted, legs crossed. Fingers were steepled as the HAWKS leaned in to listen.
‘I don’t think we admit that enough,’ he continued. ‘I don’t think we admit how out of our depth we are sometimes.’
The little voice in his head that had been urging him to speak now screamed at him to shut the fuck up.
‘I’m new to this. All this,’ Hamza continued. Sweat glistened on the lectern when he shifted his hands, adjusting his grip on the wooden plinth. ‘You can probably tell I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.’
There was a chuckle. Just one at first, but it rippled outwards a row or two before dying away.
‘But I’m going to do my best. That’s what we do every day, I suppose. Personally. And in the police as a whole. We’re not perfect. I know I’m not. But we do our best.’
Hamza took a breath. Swallowed again.
‘And, well, there are times when, no matter how hard we try, we need a bit of help. All of us. There are times when we realise that we can’t necessarily do everything on our own.
And that’s OK. That’s good, in fact. Because it forces us to make connections.
To reach out to one another. To ask for support, and offer it in return. ’
There was some murmured agreement from the crowd. Over on Hamza’s left, Ben Forde muttered, ‘Ah, shite,’ as his biscuit lost its structural integrity and collapsed into his tea.
Hamza could sense a way out now, though. There was a path ahead, he just had to take it.
‘Like you. Like HAWKS. That connection, that mutual support between you and us, between your organisation and the police, that’s crucial. We don’t live in a crime-free society, and, sadly, we don’t have unlimited resources. Far from it.’
Sergeant Fleck leaned in a little closer to the microphone.
‘Maybe some of you folks could bring that up with the politicians in the room,’ he suggested.
The two men in the front row smiled, even as a few boos rang out from up near the back.
Fleck winked at Hamza, then stepped back again, letting the DI bring it home.
‘I’m not going to lie to you. Sometimes, I’ve been resistant to the idea of accepting help in the past. Whether with work or… personal issues. I have a tendency to bottle it up a bit. Try and deal with it all on my own.’
Hamza released his grip on the lectern and straightened up, letting his hands fall to his sides.
‘But that’s not right. That’s not healthy. We need each other. People. Communities. Organisations. We need to work together, to collaborate, to have each other’s backs.’
The nagging voice in Hamza’s head had been well and truly silenced now. Around the room, dozens of heads of grey hair all nodded their agreement.
The finish line was in sight. He decided to end with a final cheesy flourish.
‘I look around this room, and that’s what I see.
People who have each other’s backs. People looking out for one another.
People giving up their time, free of charge, dedicating themselves to protecting members of other communities they might never even meet.
And that is something I’m proud to be here to celebrate. ’
The applause was already starting. Hamza had to raise his voice to be heard above it.
‘I don’t know what I’m doing. Not yet. But I feel better knowing that each and every one of you is here to support me while I figure it out.’
They were on their feet. Due to various ailments, it took some of them a bit longer than the rest, but they were all standing, all clapping, all nodding their agreement, and trumpeting their approval.
‘Nicely done,’ Sergeant Fleck whispered.
Hamza stole a glance at Ben, who stopped fishing in his tea with a finger long enough to give him a big smile and a wink.
‘Now,’ Hamza said, holding up the envelope. ‘Let’s get to the main event.’
Tyler waited until they were through the main gate and back on the beach road before asking the question.
‘So, what’s the scoop, then, boss? You think she killed him, or what?’
‘Her? No. I mean, not personally,’ Logan said, glancing in the rear-view mirror as if expecting to see they were being followed.
‘You think she hired someone to do it?’
‘She could certainly afford it,’ Logan said. He shot a sideways look at Tyler, hoping to catch the detective constable’s reaction. ‘She’s worth a hundred and thirty million dollars.’
‘Jesus fuck!’ Tyler spluttered. ‘How?’
‘Bitcoin, apparently.’
‘Bitcoin? Here, I bought a Bitcoin last year!’ Tyler cried. ‘Well, about zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero-one percent of a Bitcoin. You think that’s worth anything?’
Logan fully turned to face him. ‘No,’ he said, before facing front again.
‘I don’t even know where it is, anyway,’ Tyler admitted. ‘Or what it is. What is it?’
‘I don’t know. It’s some computer thing, isn’t it?’
‘Hamza would know,’ Tyler reasoned. ‘That sort of thing’ll be right up his street.’
He gazed out through the window and whistled through his teeth.
‘A hundred and thirty million.’
Tyler shook his head, like he couldn’t get the number to make sense, like his brain was flat out rejecting it.
‘Oh, wait! That’s dollars, though, you said. That might not be that much.’
He took out his phone and typed the figure into Google as they turned onto the main road and headed south towards Inverness.
‘No, no. It’s still an absolute shitload,’ he said, returning the phone to his pocket. ‘So, she could’ve paid for someone to do him in, then?’
‘With that bank balance, she could’ve paid to have him exiled to the fucking moon,’ Logan replied. He sniffed, sighed, and shook his head. ‘But I’m not feeling it. I still need to figure out just what the relationship between them all is, but my gut says she didn’t do it.’
‘Maybe he was coming for her money, though, boss.’
‘Maybe,’ Logan conceded.
‘Or maybe she was protecting the kids.’
The way Tyler said it made Logan turn to him again. ‘What makes you say that?’
So Tyler told him. About the LEGO. About the boy. About Goldie, the bad man’s dog, and how little Jack had seen both the dog and the man when Victor had taken him on a detour on the way home from the shops.
They’d argued, apparently. Victor had told the man he was sorry. Told him he had things under control. Promised to do better.
And little Jack had sat in his booster seat, watching and listening to it all.
‘When was this? Where?’ Logan asked.
Tyler winced. ‘Not sure. He was a bit vague on that. Within the last few months, though. His mum was in the hospital having the baby, or maybe she’d not long had it. Around then, anyway.’
‘Sounds like a boss of some kind. Someone higher up the chain.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Tyler said. ‘The dog was nice enough, though, apparently, so I suppose that’s something.’
‘I suppose it is, aye,’ Logan agreed. He checked the mirrors, indicated, then pulled past a slow-moving Vauxhall Corsa. ‘Good work, son.’
Tyler brightened at that. ‘Cheers, boss!’
The steering wheel creaked as Logan adjusted his grip. ‘How you feeling about this interview tomorrow?’
‘Pretty good, aye. Pretty decent.’
‘You, eh, got any questions or anything? Anything you want any advice on?’
Tyler blew out his cheeks. ‘Don’t think so, boss. Think I’m good.’
Logan’s brow furrowed. ‘What? You don’t want any advice?’
Tyler stared blankly ahead for a few seconds, giving the offer some more thought.
‘No. No, I think I’m good. Think I’m all set, boss.’
Logan raised his eyebrows, shook his head, and then replied with a slightly bewildered, ‘Fair enough.’
They rode on in silence. Tyler checked his watch, then checked his phone, then tapped his thumbs together as they continued down the road.
‘Like, no question at all?’ Logan asked. ‘You don’t want any input from me?’
‘No, I really think I’m good, boss,’ Tyler told him. ‘Unless…’
He sat up straighter as a thought occurred to him.
‘Did you talk to Sinead? Has she asked you anything?’
‘She has,’ Logan confirmed.
‘Oh! Right! Well, what did she ask?’
Logan continued to stare dead ahead. ‘I’m not going to tell you that, son. If you want to ask questions, you need to come up with them yourself.’
‘Right. Right, aye.’ Tyler chewed on his lip for a moment. ‘Or, how about you just give me the same advice that you gave her? Just, you know, what you said to her, word for word. That’d be fair, wouldn’t it?’
Logan made a non-committal sort of groaning noise at the back of his throat, then drummed his fingers on the wheel.
‘Exactly the same?’ he asked. ‘Word for word?’
‘I think that’s fair, boss. I don’t think anyone could complain about that.’
‘OK, then,’ Logan asked. He turned just long enough to meet Tyler’s eye. ‘I said, “Don’t worry about a thing. You’ve got this in the bag.”’
‘Aw, cheers, boss,’ Tyler said, then the smile that had started to spread across his face spluttered and died. ‘Wait, what? That’s what you told…?’
‘Word for word, son,’ Logan said.
Then, with the sound of Tyler’s brain whirring away in the passenger seat beside him, Jack dropped down a gear, put his foot to the floor, and sped south down the A96.
The Belov brothers were clever. Not clever enough to avoid suspicion, granted. Not clever enough to avoid detection entirely.
But clever enough to avoid any possibility of conviction.
There had been a lot of meetings concerning their suspected criminality. A lot of surveillance. A lot of time and money spent on investigations.
They had enough on the brothers to justify it all, but not enough—nowhere near enough—to convince the Procurator Fiscal that charges should be raised.
Any evidence was circumstantial. Any statements that named them—two in the last four years—had both been withdrawn by the people who’d made them.
Reading between the lines of it all told a story of a ruthless Slovakian family that had muscled into Bosco Maximuke’s old territory, quickly established new routes for running drugs into ports at Aberdeen and Mallaig, and from there across the whole north of Scotland.
But reading between the lines would never stand up in court.
‘They’re slippery bastards,’ Dave Davidson said, which quite neatly summed up the whole thing.
Sinead ran a hand down her face, then used it to cover a yawn. Standing, she picked up the most recent stack of papers she’d gone through, folded another sheet of A4 around them, then scribbled her name, the date, and the time on them so she or Dave wouldn’t accidentally pick them up again.
She returned the stack to a box half-filled with similarly annotated stacks, then grabbed a good inch and a half of printouts from the next box over.
To her immense relief, a phone rang, providing a welcome break from the tedium.
‘If it’s for me, I’m not in,’ Dave said, not looking up from the page he was reading.
Sinead looked around at the desk phones until she figured out which one was ringing. Hamza’s.
‘DI Khaled’s desk. This is DC Sinead Bell,’ she said, after picking up the phone. The sound of the voice on the other end made her straighten. ‘Yes, ma’am. No, not back yet, ma’am. Can I…?’
She listened. As she did, her eyes widened. She cradled the phone to her ear, her hands searching the desk for a pencil and pad.
‘Yes, ma’am. Right, ma’am,’ Sinead said.
She found what she was looking for. The pen scratched a spider’s scrawl across the paper.
‘Thank you, ma’am. I’ll get on it right away.’
She returned the phone to the cradle and leaned on the desk, staring down at the pad and what she’d written there.
‘Take it it wasn’t for me, then?’ Dave asked.
‘No. No, not for you.’ Sinead tore the page from the pad and straightened up. ‘We need to get hold of the others.’
She crossed to Dave’s desk in three big paces, and placed the note down in front of him.
‘Bloody hell,’ he remarked.
‘Aye,’ Sinead said. She took out her mobile and pulled up Tyler’s number. ‘You can say that again.’