FIFTY-ONE

  ‘I’m sitting here with two furry friends on my lap,’ Miller said, when Xiu answered the phone. He was relieved that he couldn’t hear the clatter of drums or the deafening scream of guitars, though it wasn’t quite silence that followed the slight whimper at his mention of the rats. ‘Doesn’t sound like you’re at home.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like you’re out playing headbanger Tinder either, so that’s got to be good.’

  ‘Let’s not get into that again,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Perish the thought.’ Miller tickled Fred’s ears and the rat rolled on to her back. ‘I just called to say thanks, really. For not saying anything to Akers about Finn.’

  ‘I’m still not sure I was doing anybody any favours.’

  ‘All the same.’

  ‘Well, thanks for saying thanks,’ Xiu said. ‘I know it’s one of those words you have a problem with. Like sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m very much with Elton John on that one,’ Miller said. ‘Though if I was being picky, I’d point out to Mr John that it’s not really the hardest word. I think floccinaucinihilipilification’s a trifle trickier, but that said, I’m not sure it would work quite as well in the song.’ Ginger was looking jealous, so Miller began to tickle her ears too. ‘How are you feeling about Operation Bastard?’

  ‘Operation what?’

  ‘That’s just what I’m calling it,’ Miller said. ‘I think it needs a name that’s a bit snappier, you know?’ He’d pointed out to Tim Sullivan that, as names for these things went, Operation Victoria was a little on the pedestrian side and of course he’d been happy to offer up alternatives. Bearing in mind the location of the op, he’d been quite pleased with Operation Operation, but Sullivan had been predictably resistant.

  ‘I’m . . . apprehensive,’ Xiu said. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I’m right as ninepence,’ Miller said. ‘I think we’ve got all the bases covered.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  ‘Look, Driscoll knows that we know he’s after Natalie, but he doesn’t know we know he’s targeting the hospital. We’re ahead of the game for once.’

  ‘So why doesn’t it feel like it?’

  Miller had no answer that was going to sound convincing. He said, ‘We should both get early nights, Posh. It’s going to be a late one tomorrow.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ll see you first thing.’

  ‘If you’re coming in on your moped you should probably leave now.’

  ‘Is that another joke?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Do you want to say “night-night” to the rats?’

  ‘Sleep well, Miller . . . ’

  A few minutes after he’d hung up and had safely deposited Fred and Ginger in their beds, he turned to see Alex, or at least her blurry reflection in a TV screen that seriously needed dusting.

  ‘You’re not fooling anyone, you know,’ she said. ‘Least of all Xiu.’

  ‘I’m not trying to fool anyone.’

  ‘Not even yourself? All that “right as ninepence” nonsense.’

  ‘Well, there’s no point making everyone nervous, is there?’

  ‘They’re already nervous and they’ve got every right to be, because it’s a stupid idea.’

  ‘To be fair, it was Natalie Bagnall’s stupid idea.’

  ‘Which you could have easily overruled,’ Alex said. ‘Every bit as easily as you could have told Driscoll that the police already had his precious briefcase, but yet again you failed to use what little common sense you’ve got and chose to keep your gob shut.’

  ‘I might be misremembering,’ Miller said. ‘You know, being as I’m consumed with grief and all that, but I’m pretty sure you used to tell me to keep my gob shut. Like, several times a day.’

  ‘Yes, because ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s what you should do, but there’s a time and a place, Miller. Remember how guilty you felt after not telling Driscoll the truth? How worried you were that your decision had put people in danger? Just imagine how you’ll feel if this goes tits-up.’

  Miller knew it was supremely idiotic to get irritated with someone who was (a) dead and (b) imaginary, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘I’m going to call Finn,’ he said.

  As he’d guessed would be the case, that did the trick. He reached for his phone, and when he glanced back at the TV again all he could see was a distorted reflection of himself. Yes, the screen was filthy, but he guessed that the image was not wholly inaccurate, because he was starting to feel seriously blurry.

  ‘Hey, Miller.’

  ‘Hey, Finn.’

  ‘You calling to give me a bollocking?’

  ‘Well, obviously I should be,’ Miller said. ‘Yes, it was my fault for bringing you along in the first place, but you seriously overstepped the mark this morning. Egging Natalie Bagnall on like that, to the point where she’s volunteered to use herself as bait to catch a very dangerous man. To put herself, quite possibly, in harm’s way.’

  ‘You could have put a stop to it,’ Finn said.

  ‘Yeah, I know—’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  Alex wasn’t around any more, but that didn’t mean Miller couldn’t hear her laughing.

  ‘So, was that the actual bollocking?’ Finn asked. ‘Or would that have been the bollocking that you should have given me, but aren’t?’

  She’d asked like she already knew the answer, because she understood Miller better than almost anybody.

  He knew that she’d seen it in his face.

  Two young women who were victims of Dudley Driscoll in very different ways, but were both equally determined to see him brought to justice, had come together. That morning in the living room of the Bagnalls’ house – doing little to intervene as Natalie Bagnall had fed off Finn’s anger and been fired up by it – Miller had been annoyed with the girl who was his daughter in everything but name, yet also fiercely proud of her.

  Every bit as proud as he knew her mother would have been.

  ‘OK, I’ll consider myself well and truly bollocked,’ she said. ‘Now I need to crack on, because I’m bloody starving.’

  ‘Talking of which, why don’t you come round and I’ll I cook you dinner when this is all over?’ Miller was talking quickly before she had a chance to make an excuse. ‘Nothing fancy, just a pie or something, and I promise it won’t take long, like an hour and a half max, because I know you don’t really like being here. We don’t even have to talk much if you don’t feel like it, or even at all. Not a dickie bird. We can do the whole thing in complete silence if that’s what you want, like Trappist monks or mime artists. You just come over, say hello to the rats, eat and bugger off again.’

  Miller spent half a minute listening to the evocative soundtrack of the town at night – the shush of the sea, the plaintive cry of distant gulls and the insistent beeping of a bin lorry reversing nearby – until Finn finally spoke again.

  ‘What kind of pie?’

  Fifteen minutes later, when Miller walked into the bedroom, Alex was lying on her usual side of the bed, thumbing through a copy of Dancing Times. She glanced up to see Miller watching her.

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  ‘Well, obviously I’m thinking about it.’ Miller got undressed and slipped into bed beside her. He yawned and stared at the ceiling for a while.

  Alex didn’t even look up from her magazine. ‘She won’t come, you know.’

  ‘Have a bit of faith,’ Miller said.

  ‘I tried that once,’ she said. ‘Remember?’

  Miller leaned across and turned the radio on, but he couldn’t summon the energy to shout at any of the callers. Not even the loon insisting that JFK had been shot by at least three different aliens. He was fast asleep before the bloke had finished ranting.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Much as she’d given him a hard time about it, because it really wasn’t any of his beeswax, Xiu was reluctantly willing to concede that Miller had a point. Picking up people at a low-rent death-metal night in a room above a grotty pub was probably not the best way to meet someone she was likely to have any kind of long-term relationship with.

  Long-term, in this case, meaning more than one night.

  She’d tried telling herself that didn’t really matter, because it was just a physical thing anyway, but it wasn’t even as though that was always great. More often than not it was anything but great, because she and whoever she ended up with were both usually trollied and far too exhausted after several hours droning on about Metallica and throwing themselves around to get up to anything very interesting. One bloke had fallen asleep in the taxi back to her place and a woman who’d made some very exciting promises during an extended drum solo was spark out and snoring before they’d had so much as a snog.

  Plus – and she hated to admit that Miller had been right about this – the smell wasn’t much of a turn-on either. There was nothing wrong with enjoying a drink when you were letting your hair down or the sultry glow of perspiration after you’d been dancing a while, but stale beer on sweat-soaked denim was hardly Chanel No 5.

  So no, it was not ideal, but it wasn’t like she had much alternative.

  The problem was, she rarely actually met anyone. Well, that wasn’t strictly true because she met people all the time, but most of them were in handcuffs which was hardly a dream start to any relationship and certainly not one with a rosy future. Offenders aside, she knocked around with plenty of fellow coppers of course, but she certainly didn’t want to get into anything serious with one of them. Yes, she’d like to spend quality time with a partner and yes, she was lonely sometimes, but she wasn’t a maniac.

  On any list of suitable matches among those people she most associated with, coppers came a notch below violent criminals and a fair few of them (certainly some she’d known back in the Met) were not a great deal more honest or law-abiding.

  Something had to change, though; she knew that.

  She’d always thought that online dating was for saddos, but perhaps it was time to admit she was a saddo and take the plunge.

  She was still thinking about it when she heard the applause and started to walk back upstairs. The interval was over. Asscrack were about to start their second set and there was a woman with a Freddy Krueger tattoo that Xiu quite liked the look of.

  FIFTY-THREE

  The dirty white van they were using as the mobile comms base was parked around the side of the hospital from which the operation took its name. The hospital where Natalie Bagnall worked. Being unable to park at the front wasn’t a major issue as they were in communication with plenty of officers who had eyes on the main entrance, and staying hidden was the main priority. Yes, it would have been nice to have a direct view of the entrance, but they would have stuck out a mile. The operation could quite possibly end up lasting days and the van being parked near the entrance for anything more than an hour or two would have made them horribly conspicuous.

  Nobody could afford the cost of a hospital car park for that long.

  It was almost ten p.m. and Miller and Xiu had already been sitting in the back of the van for three hours when Tony Clough – who was in the front, cosied up next to Tim Sullivan – turned to give them a thumbs-up.

  ‘So far, so good.’

  Miller leaned forward. ‘What, because everyone involved is still alive, as far as we know? Because the hospital hasn’t blown up or been hit by an asteroid? Because you haven’t broken wind yet? You might need to be a bit more specific, Tony.’

  Nerves were possibly making Miller even tetchier than normal and, in fairness, so far so good was about the best they could hope for considering some of the people involved. Of course there were weak links in any chain, but when you had the likes of Sullivan and Clough on the team, it was as if several links on one of those ten-tonne chains they used to anchor ships had been removed and replaced by spaghetti hoops.

  The hoop-in-chief had been predictably bumptious at the morning briefing.

  ‘This is the big one,’ Sullivan had said. And ‘Let’s bring this one home.’

  The DI had clearly been very excited at the prospect of an operation that was likely to be the turning point of the investigation. He was ready and he was rising to the occasion, even if he was a little blasé when it came to the seriousness of the operation itself. While not completely ignoring the risks inherent in what they were doing, he seemed happy enough to play down the possibility of that turning point involving demotions or disciplinary hearings or – if things went spectacularly pear-shaped – the death of an innocent member of the public. Perhaps his head had been turned by the fact that, although there’d be a firearms commander on site to whom he would have to defer should the need arise, at least he wouldn’t end up having to answer to a stroppy landlady.

  ‘This is the big one,’ he said, when they’d finished, right before he’d shaken his head, cross with himself when he remembered that he’d said it already.

  The rest of the day had been taken up with logistics in and around the hospital. A technical team had gone in to check that the Vic’s CCTV cameras were all working (at least half of them hadn’t been) and to ensure that live feeds from the hospital’s security system could be patched through to all mobile units. Floorplans were studied so that officers could be best positioned inside the hospital, observation posts were established close to all the entrances and the firearms unit took key decisions about where to best deploy their teams.

  At lunchtime, while Miller and Xiu were grabbing a toasted sandwich, Xiu had said, ‘Well, I’m not sure if it’s the big one. Like Sullivan said.’

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘But it’s definitely a big one. Biggest operation I’ve ever been involved with.’

  ‘You look tired,’ Miller had said.

  Xiu had focused on her sandwich after that.

  The first part of operation Victoria – which Sullivan had actually referred to as ‘setting the trap’ – had begun when Natalie Bagnall left for work. She’d carried the briefcase out to her car at 7.15 p.m., placed it in the boot, then set off on a nice steady drive which would see her arrive in good time to change into her uniform and be stepping into A&E by 7.45.

  ‘Good girl,’ Sullivan had cooed softly into his radio, broadcasting to all units. ‘Good girl . . . ’

  In the unmarked car directly behind her, Miller had turned to Xiu. ‘That’s how I talk to Fred and Ginger.’

  There were other unmarked vehicles in front of Natalie’s Kia Picanto, a radio on the passenger seat in case of emergencies and all units watching out for Draper/Driscoll/Dawson’s VW Polo, which had not been spotted anywhere since the previous afternoon.

  ‘Nice and easy . . . just driving to work, nice and normal . . . good girl.’

  ‘For the love of God,’ Miller said. ‘Make it stop.’

  Carrying the briefcase and looking for all the world like she didn’t have a care, Natalie had eventually walked across the darkened car park, briefcase in hand, and in through the hospital’s main entrance bang on time. Plain-clothes officers, while maintaining an appropriate distance, had moved with her, monitoring every step of her progress until she’d arrived in Accident and Emergency. From that point on, all any of them could do was wait for Driscoll to make his move.

  ‘Game on,’ Tim Sullivan had announced.

  ‘Oh, do put a sock in it,’ Miller had said.

  Now, four hours after that, Miller was still sitting alongside Xiu in the back of the comms van and wondering how it was possible to be nervous and unutterably bored at the same time. He stared at the as yet unused empty pop bottle and thought about having a bash, just to give himself something to do. He wondered what practical arrangements Xiu had made, urination-wise. It would need to be something with a wider access point. A paper cup maybe or a small Tupperware container.

  He thought about asking her, then decided against it.

  Xiu sniffed and rolled her head around.

  ‘You do look tired,’ he said.

  She ignored him.

  He leaned over to tap the shoulder of the civilian technician who was sitting in front of a row of video monitors. ‘I don’t suppose you can get Channel Four on any of those, can you? I think Naked Attraction might be on.’ The technician said nothing. ‘No? Just a thought . . . ’

  He reached for his phone when a text message alert sounded, unable to contain his excitement.

  It was a message from Bob Perks.

  How’s Victoria going?

  Bastard.

  What???

  Sorry. That’s just what I call it.

  Well, good luck. If you catch him, can I sit in on the interview?

  If you bring biscuits.

  Deal.

  No, cake—

  Miller stopped typing when the radio suddenly crackled into life and the voice of an officer rang around the van.

  ‘Unknown male approaching the entrance to A&E. Looks like our man.’

  Sullivan turned from the front seat and raised a hand, like everyone wasn’t already frozen and paying attention. They all stared at the monitors.

  ‘Approaching camera location now.’

  Miller leaned towards the screen, holding his breath as he waited for a close-up shot of the suspect.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I look more like Driscoll than he does.’ Miller leaned even closer. ‘He looks like that bloke off Antiques Roadshow. The one who does the Oriental ceramics.’

  ‘All units stand down.’ Sullivan barked into his radio. ‘Repeat, stand down.’

  ‘You’re a thundering twatbadger,’ Miller muttered as he reached for his phone to finish the SMS conversation with Bob Perks. ‘Repeat, twatbadger.’