wanted.”
“I'm the new girl,” Helen said still without looking at him. “Tell me what makes him so special.”
Look, love,” Fletcher said, “Bernie's a star villain, best lance man in the business. He went though the vault of that bank like butter and damn near caused an international incident, the Japanese embassy went ballistic. Went in from an old sewer nobody knew was there, clean as a whistle, left us with egg on our face. Vanished into thin air. We never got a sniff on that job.”
“I know where he is,” she murmured.
Fletcher was stunned. “Say that again?”
“Bernard Goodman. I know where he is, Mark,” she turned to face him, her expression sombre.
“Come on...you're kidding me.”
She shook her head. “I wish I was.”
Fletcher took her hand in his. “Look, Helen,” he said carefully, “this is serious. Are you telling me you know where Bernie Goodman is, right now, this minute?”
She nodded.
“Jesus Christ,” Fletcher exclaimed, “You'd better tell me all about it.”
“It's not that simple.”
“Look Helen, we're not talking about some toe-rag here you know, Goodman's a major league villain. Any D worth his salt would give his eye teeth to nail him. That's the stuff reputations are made of.”
“I know,” she said, “That's what worries me.”
Fletcher was still holding her hand. “If you know anything about Bernie Goodman's whereabouts, you need to tell me right now.”
“As you and me, or as detectives?”
“As you and me. God sakes if we can't trust each other now, it's a poor lookout.”
“All right,” she agreed. “It's funny how it happened, you know Mark. I mean me getting a whisper on a thing like this.”
“Go on,” he urged her, the hairs on the bak of his neck starting to prickle, “tell me about it.”
Helen frowned. “Well, when I was doing my initial training at Hendon there was a girl in my class called Carol Dunne. How she ever got past the selection board I'll never know, you could see a mile off she'd never make it. Anyway, I felt sorry for her and we became friends. Weekends I used to go and stay with her family in Devon. She was a strange girl and I got the impression she joined the police in desperation to try to bring some sort of order to her life. But it didn't work and after Hendon she did a couple of months as a pro con then packed it in. We kept in touch for a while but when she started working as a croupier in the clubs I didn't hear from her anymore and I presumed she was breaking all her old ties, one by one and I was the last. Anyway the years went by, then last week, right out of the blue she phoned me and said she wanted to see me about something important, something she couldn't talk about on the phone. She sounded so desperate I agreed to meet her, but you know, if she hadn't made the first move, I'd never have recognised her, she'd changed completely, and lets say the years hadn't been kind.”
Helen paused for a moment and then continued, “Well to cut a long story short she told me she was living with this Greek and working nights as a croupier and hostess at the Desert Island Club at the Elephant. She said this boyfriend of hers was a right piece of work who'd get juiced up and knock her about then come crawling back and plead with her when he was dried out again. She said she stuck with him because he needed her and besides....”
“The Desert Island,” Fletcher interrupted, “That's Danny Hood's place, a real nutter. Used to be a pretty fair heavyweight boxer before he got punchy and drifted into bad company.”
“Well anyway,” Helen picked up the thread, “Carol told me she was terrified because this boyfriend had got in over his head with Hood. So I told her I couldn't help unless she was more specific and she came right out with it. She told me they've got Goodman locked up in a back room at the club and they're squeezing him dry. She said the deal had started off as a hide out, but now he was a prisoner and the thing was getting out of hand.”
Fletcher was suspicious. “How'd she know all this?”
“Apparently the Greek's inclined to brag when he's had a skinfull and she's scared stiff they're going to find out and do something to keep him quiet.”
“Well she knows the score there all right,” Fletcher said, “that's about Hood's barrow.”
“She said she couldn't think of any way out,and then she remembered me and tried the phone number I'd given her way back.”
“OK, Helen,” Fletcher was still sceptical, “So she comes to you and spins you this yarn. What's to say it's not just some fairy tale she's dreamed up to give her man a hard time. What's her angle?”
“There's a kid,” Helen said. “I finally got it out of her. She had a baby by the Greek, that's what's eating her up. Just one of our little feminine quirks.”
“All right,” Fletcher said, “you get her to come in and we can put something together. We're going to need a warrant and that means reasonable grounds...do you think she could handle a wire?”
“Mark,” Helen said, “You haven't understood a word I've said, have you. There's no way Carol can be involved,or me either, they'd put it together in no time flat. What do you think I was asking you about withholding evidence for?”
“On a thing like this,” Fletcher said, “we could get her into a witness protection scheme, safe house, new identity, new life, and you're a squad officer so you're fireproof.”
Helen shook her head. “No way,” she said, “That bunch of maniacs would be on to Carol like a flash and she'd be in worse trouble than she is now. You know witness protection is Mickey Mouse”
“I could go to the guv'nor, lay it on the line.”
“Oh Mark, don't you see? Then I'd have to deny this conversation ever took place. She's put me in an impossible position just because I feel sorry for her. We were good friends once.”
She looked so troubled that Fletcher cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lightly. “Well you got it off your chest, that's a good thing. Now you leave it to me, I'll work something out.”
But the prize of Bernie Goodman, the gold robber who had outwitted the Yard's finest was too much to resist. The following morning DS Mark Fletcher called his team together for a little off the record conference. Laid it on the line for them without revealing his informant.
“The only way around this,” he told them, “is to take that pillock Dan Hood out've the frame and soften him up a bit, then we hit the club and collar Goodman.”
“Nick 'im official skip?” one of the DCs asked and Fletcher shook his head. “No, this one's a foreigner, we'll do it off our own bat and see how it shapes. The fewer know about this the better especially as we'll be off our manor. We'll book out on general enquiries tonight, two cars will do, oh and one of you draw a shooter, give 'em the usual rigmarole, OK?”
Working to Mark Fletcher's instructions they pulled Daniel Hood that night, sandwiched his Merc between unmarked police cars as he left the Desert Island shortly after midnight. The exchange in the New Kent Road was brief and to the point. After forcing the Mercedes to stop, the armed detective thrust a 9mm Glock through the driver's window into the face of the bodyguard behind the wheel whose eyes immediately took on a glazed thousand yard stare. Fletcher opened the passenger's door and invited Hood to step out. “Congratulations Danny,” he told him, “You're the star turn for tonight.”
They took Hood to an undertaker's off the Walworth Road just as Fletcher had planned and in the prep room which reeked of death and embalming fluid, stripped him naked and laid him out on one of the freezer drawers. Daniel Hood was a hard man. He had a hard smooth face drawn taut by scar tissue, a legacy of his days in the ring. His heavy body had begun to run to fat and looked strangely vulnerable stretched out on the slab. His cold eyes betrayed no emotion. Daniel Hood was accustomed to playing games with the filth.
Fletcher twisted a toe tag around his finger. “Heard you've got yourself a lodger down at the Island these days, Danny.”
“What makes you think that Mr Fletcher?”
“Just a whisper, Danny.”
“Someone's pulling your leg Mr Fletcher.”
“Name of Bernie Goodman.”
“Bernie Goodman? Never heard of him.”
“And he's outstayed his welcome, Danny.”
“I don't know where you get 'em from Mr Fletcher.”
Fletcher gave the drawer a shove with his foot and it slid back into the freezer. He waited a moment or two and then rolled Hood out again.
“About this lodger of yours Danny”
Hood's teeth chattered when he spoke through clenched jaw. “I already told you, I don't know what you're talking about.”
“You'll remember soon enough, Danny,” Fletcher said and he repeated the treatment, wheeling Hood in and out of the freezer, leaving him in the ice box just a little bit longer each time. The hard man's lips were turning blue, but his eyes remained expressionless.
“See, the way we reckon it, Danny, you've had your pound of flesh out of old Bernie, now it's our turn. So how about it?”
“Get stuffed copper,” Hood replied flatly.
The interrogation followed the same pattern for a while longer with the drawer carrying Hood in and out of the freezer, and finally when he could no longer feel his extremities, the hard man began to relent.
“This cock and bull story of yours Mr Fletcher, just supposing it was true, I'd be daft to admit it without some safeguards, wouldn't I ?”
“We're not interested in you, Danny,”