CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Professional Standards arrived in Hull at eleven twenty-three in the morning with three unmarked cars, six investigators and the atmosphere of people who had already read enough to dislike everyone.
Drew watched them cross the hospital car park from the passenger seat of Leah's car.
"They always walk like that?"
Leah looked through the windscreen.
"Like what?"
"Like somebody has confessed before they've reached the building."
"Occupational optimism."
"Police humour?"
"No. Police despair with better tailoring."
Drew almost smiled.
Almost.
He had slept for forty-eight minutes in a plastic chair beside Pete Lawson, who had spent thirty of them asking nurses whether the bullet that went through his arm technically counted as an NHS piercing.
Pete was alive.
Daniel was alive.
Michael was alive.
Terry Pike was alive.
Drew was starting to think death had become an unreliable administrative category.
Leah's phone vibrated.
She checked the screen.
"Calder."
"Good news?"
"She doesn't send those."
Leah answered.
Drew watched her face flatten.
"Yes. We're outside."
Pause.
"No, he hasn't opened it."
Drew looked at the envelope in his hand.
His father's handwriting had survived twelve years better than his memory of the man's voice.
DREW.
Nothing else.
Leah ended the call.
"They want you upstairs."
"Professional Standards?"
"No. NCA first. Professional Standards wants me."
"Difference?"
"One group believes you're a criminal. The other believes I might be."
"Efficient."
She reached for the door.
Drew did not move.
Leah looked at him.
"You coming?"
He looked down at the envelope.
"In a minute."
Her hand left the door handle.
She waited.
That was one of the things he had learned about Leah Quinn.
She did not fill silence because silence made her uncomfortable.
She waited until it became useful.
Drew ran his thumb along the sealed edge.
"What if he's apologising?"
"Then you can decide whether twelve-year-old stationery deserves forgiveness."
"What if he explains everything?"
"Then he's doing better than the living men."
Drew looked at her.
"You don't have to stay."
"I know."
She stayed.
He opened the envelope.
The paper inside had been folded twice.
Richard Sayer had written in blue ink.
Drew read the first line and stopped breathing for a second.
Son,
If Michael gives you this, it means I did not get out clean.
Drew closed his eyes.
Leah said nothing.
He kept reading.
I am not writing to tell you I was a good man.
I wasn't. I made money carrying stolen cars before you were old enough to know what a gearbox was.
I helped Mick and Terry build routes I later pretended belonged to other people.
I put cash into North End because I liked being useful to dangerous men and because being feared felt too much like being respected when I was young.
That is mine.
Do not let anyone turn it into sacrifice.
Drew swallowed.
Richard continued.
Daniel knows some of it. More than I wanted. He followed me because he thought knowing made him older. I let him. That is mine too.
You were different.
Not better. Don't get proud.
You hated being told what to do, which is inconvenient in a son and useful in a man.
Drew laughed once despite himself.
Leah looked at him.
"That him?"
"Unfortunately."
He read on.
Terry wants the route to grow. Hale wants police protection paid for in percentages. Mick wants out but is frightened of what happens to Gareth and Owen if he walks. Michael says he can build a case if we give him time.
I do not think we have time.
If something happens to me, do not inherit my fear.
North End is not a building, a patch or a route. It is men deciding they owe each other something. That can be good or it can become an excuse for every terrible thing you want to do.
If they ever put a chair in front of you, remember the chair is wood.
The men matter.
The route doesn't.
The money doesn't.
And if Daniel comes home angry, tell him I was sorry I made him believe knowing my sins meant he had to carry them.
Drew's vision blurred.
He hated that.
He read the last paragraph anyway.
I have given Michael copies of what I have. I am going to meet Hale tomorrow and tell him I am out. If Michael is right, police will be close enough to stop anything stupid.
If Michael is wrong, I suppose you are reading this.
I love you.
I should have said it more when I was alive instead of assuming there would always be another Thursday.
Dad.
Drew stared at the page.
The hospital car park continued around them.
A woman pushed a pram past the bonnet.
An ambulance reversed somewhere behind the building.
A gull screamed from a lamp post with the confidence of a creature that had never met Professional Standards.
Leah studied the letter.
"Michael was meant to protect him."
"Yeah."
"And didn't."
"Yeah."
She turned to Drew.
"You okay?"
He folded the letter carefully.
"No."
"Good answer."
"You?"
"Also no."
"Excellent relationship foundation."
That got the smallest smile from her.
They got out.
Inside, the hospital had become a temporary courthouse without judges.
NCA occupied a family room.
Professional Standards had taken an office beside radiology.
Two IOPC investigators had arrived because Terry's release included evidence of deaths involving serving police officers and because apparently one oversight body was insufficient for the quantity of corruption available.
Ruth Calder stood in the corridor with three coffees and the expression of a woman considering whether caffeine could legally be administered intravenously.
She handed one to Leah.
"DCS Imogen Shaw has your Professional Standards review."
Leah took it.
"How bad?"
"She read your undercover authority, Venn's amendments, Michael's old intelligence reports and the messages where you told me to go fuck myself."
Leah looked at her.
"Those were operationally necessary."
"I included that in my statement," Calder said. "It did not help."
"Helpful."
"Daniel, Michael and Gareth all face interviews or arrest. Kidnapping, drugs, money laundering, evidence offences. Cooperation matters. It doesn't erase anything."
"Daniel?" Drew asked. "Prison?"
Calder looked at him.
"Possibly."
Drew accepted it.
He was tired of people using love as an argument against consequences.
Calder nodded toward the envelope in his hand.
"You opened it."
"My dad thought Michael would keep him alive."
Calder closed her eyes for half a second.
"Of course he did."
Leah faced her.
"You knew?"
"Not the letter. Michael told me Richard was supposed to meet Hale under observation. The operation was pulled ninety minutes before the meeting."
Drew's hand closed around the envelope.
"Pulled by who?"
Calder looked toward the Professional Standards office.
"Marcus Venn signed the cancellation. Robert Hale supplied intelligence claiming Richard was armed and planning to flee. Michael objected. Then Michael accepted the cancellation and tried to handle it himself."
Leah's grip tightened around the coffee cup.
"He didn't tell Richard."
"No."
"Because?"
Calder's voice stayed level.
"Because Michael believed if he warned Richard, Venn would know he had broken chain of command and Michael's own covert work would collapse."
Drew laughed.
It sounded ugly.
"So my dad died because another man protected his operation."
Nobody argued.
Leah looked at the closed door to Michael's room.
"I'm going to speak to him before they interview him."
Calder caught her eye.
"As his daughter or as a police officer?"
Leah thought about it.
"His daughter."
"Then leave the warrant card with me."
Leah pulled it from her pocket.
She placed it in Calder's hand.
Drew watched her walk toward Michael's room.
Calder looked at him.
"You should go downstairs. NCA wants your statement about Spurn."
"In a minute."
She followed his gaze.
"You can't fix that conversation."
"Wasn't planning to."
"What are you planning?"
Drew looked down at Richard's letter.
The chair is wood.
The men matter.
"I think I'm going to close a business."
Calder frowned.
"Which business?"
Drew folded the letter and put it inside his coat.
"The one everybody keeps killing each other to inherit."