Fifty-One
Miller had dreamed about Alex and woken in tears, the sofa cushion beneath his cheek soggy with them.
Washing and changing his clothes as fast as he could, he thought about how strange it was that the dreams he regularly had of her felt a lot more real than the encounters he imagined almost every day.
Waking alone and remembering was so much more painful than blinking her away or turning round to find her gone in the middle of a conversation about nothing.
He’d been halfway to work, steering the moped through busy traffic on the edge of Stanley Park, when Susan Akers had called.
‘Well, we don’t need to worry about where Neil Battersby is,’ she’d said.
Miller had been forced to brake hard, and had only just avoided careering into the back of an ice-cream van. ‘Why’s that, then?’
‘Because he’s told us.’
*
Half an hour later, in the swankiest briefing room that Blackpool Police HQ had to offer, it transpired that the DCI had been exaggerating just a little.
‘What he’s actually told us is where the van containing the ransom needs to stop.
Where it needs to make the first of several stops.
’ Akers looked across at Miller, Xiu and Sullivan, then nodded to DI Amar Chopra who was sitting at the far end of a long table, focused on a series of screens alongside two colleagues from the Kidnap Unit.
It looked very much as though, from here on in, it was his show.
‘Our suspect made a call to Barry Cheshire just over an hour ago,’ Chopra said.
‘A call which we obviously intercepted, having put a trace on Cheshire’s phone once he was secured in the safe house.
The suspect provided a location where the van is to make the first of several stops at twenty-one hundred hours this evening. ’
‘Tonight?’ Miller said.
‘Sooner the handover’s made the better,’ Chopra said.
‘That a problem?’ Sullivan asked.
There was a dance class he would need to duck out of, but Miller did not talk about the ballroom dancing at work. Even if he decided to do so, he sensed that this might not be the ideal time to bring it up. ‘No, that’s all good,’ he said.
Chopra’s fingers were already flying across a keyboard and a map appeared on one of the screens: a large expanse of water with woodland on three sides and a narrow track running alongside the other.
‘That’s Grizedale Reservoir,’ Miller said. ‘I went fishing up there once.’
Chopra zoomed in. ‘It’s the ideal spot.’
‘You’re bang on about that. Got a couple of very decent rainbow trout as I remember.’
‘Ideal for Battersby, I mean. Twenty-five miles north of here … it’s not busy or overlooked, and from there he can direct us further north up the M6, west towards the coast or east into the Forest of Bowland.
He’ll call Cheshire to provide further instructions once the van has arrived at that first location. ’
‘Giving us the runaround,’ Xiu said.
‘It’s fairly standard in these situations.’
‘He’s trying to ensure that we can’t follow the van to the final drop-off,’ Sullivan said.
‘Yeah, well, I think we’d all worked that out.’ Miller caught Xiu’s eye and shook his head.
‘DI Sullivan is correct,’ Chopra said. ‘We will be following the van, of course, just not in the way our suspect might be expecting.’
‘Got some Secret Squirrel moves planned?’ Miller asked.
‘You’ll be fully briefed in good time,’ Chopra said.
‘Hang about … when you say he’ll call Cheshire to give him further instructions, does that mean he’s expecting Cheshire to be in the van?’
‘Battersby’s insisting on it. He wants Cheshire and only Cheshire to drive the van and deliver the ransom, but let me make it perfectly clear up front, that’s—’
‘—not happening.’
Miller and Chopra had said it simultaneously.
‘Jinx!’ Miller said.
‘I have already made my feelings on this subject known to DCI Akers.’
Akers nodded. ‘We have a plan.’
‘I’m all ears,’ Miller said.
‘Operations such as this, however carefully put together, can fall apart when you least expect them to,’ Chopra said.
‘People can behave very strangely when they’re under pressure.
Bad things can happen all too easily. So, whatever our suspect’s wishes might be, it’s my professional opinion that Cheshire – who is a civilian, let’s not forget that – should be accompanied in that van by an experienced officer from my team. ’
‘No chance.’ Miller was on his feet. ‘That’s a stupid plan. I should be the one—’
‘Hang on a minute, Declan,’ Akers said.
‘That’s my opinion,’ Chopra said.
‘I don’t give a stuff what your opinion is. The Ezra Simmons case was mine and it was because of his death that the Cutlers tried to kill Barry Cheshire, which they cocked up by murdering Darren Grant instead. That was also my case, it still is my case—’
‘Declan—’
‘Most importantly, that attempt to kill Barry Cheshire is the only reason the kidnap happened at all, and because I was there at the beginning it’s only right and proper that I’m there at the end, so—’
Akers slammed her hand down on the table. ‘Oh, put a bloody sock in it, Detective Sergeant Miller. Shut up for once and listen.’
‘I stand by my opinion,’ Chopra said. ‘But – for reasons I cannot begin to fathom – Mr Cheshire himself has other ideas. He is adamant that the only police officer he wants alongside him in that van is …’ He pointed, and paused, and the grimace made it clear how much it pained him to say the name out loud. ‘Detective Sergeant Miller.’
‘Oh.’ Miller quickly sat back down again. ‘Well, like I said … it’s an excellent plan.’
Chopra went back to his keyboard and called up a further series of screens as he outlined how the operation would proceed from this point on.
‘The van containing the drugs will be collected from the Cutler house at twenty-hundred hours this evening. Technicians are on their way to that address now, so that by the time DS Miller and Mr Cheshire are ready to leave for the first rendezvous point at the reservoir, the vehicle will have been fitted with a state-of-the-art GPS tracker as well as our most comprehensive comms set-up.’
Miller raised a finger and waited until Chopra gave him the nod. ‘Has it got a decent heater? Only it might get a tad parky later on.’
Chopra stiffened and took a few moments to ensure that he had everyone’s attention. ‘First off, I want my very serious reservations about the set-up of this operation, specifically the personnel involved, noted.’
Miller nodded, trying his best to appear respectful, and hoping that the stuff he couldn’t give was not too obvious.
‘Second of all, and most importantly, I want it understood that no attempt will be made, during the handover, to apprehend Neil Battersby. No attempt whatsoever. We will of course be doing our utmost to take our suspect into custody at some point later on, but our priority this evening remains the safe return of our hostage to his family.’ Chopra paused and looked around the table. ‘Is that clear?’
No pithy comeback popped into Miller’s head, no smartarse comment occurred to him, but he was all too aware of Susan Akers giving him a good, hard stare, just in case one had.
On the way out, Xiu surreptitiously handed Miller a cheap, plastic bag.
‘For me?’
‘It’s not a gift,’ Xiu said. ‘We had a wager.’
‘Oh!’ Miller opened the bag and gleefully removed the packet of Jammie Dodgers from inside. ‘Aha!’
‘So, the DNA we took from Jeff the bouncer was a full match for the samples we got from Sania Malik’s clothes. They’re charging him later today.’
‘Well, obviously that’s very good news, but—’
‘Yes it is—’
‘I knew I should have pushed for more than one packet.’
They walked towards the stairs. ‘You’ve got good instincts, Miller,’ Xiu said. ‘Atrocious table manners, an annoyingly ju-venile sense of humour and a complete inability to read a room … but good instincts.’
‘Oh, do stop it, Posh.’ Miller dabbed at his eyes. ‘I think I’m going to cry.’