The First Stella Cole Boxset Page 15

  “Sorry? What do you mean?”

  “Would you,” she poked him gently in the chest, “let me know,” she let her fingertip drift across and onto his arm, “if you thought I was good looking?”

  “Yes. Of course. But, you know, you being widowed and everything.”

  “I’m a widow, Danny, not a nun. I won’t faint if you pay me a compliment.”

  He looked her up and down then, not furtively, taking his time. She noticed the way his smooth glance stuttered over her cleavage before returning to her face. Thanks, girls.

  “You’re fit, Stella. No mistake.”

  “There. That wasn’t too difficult, was it?”

  After leaving the pub, Stella suggested a stroll along a stretch of towpath on the Regent’s Canal that ran between two streets near the pub. It was time to strike. She threaded her arm through his and leaned in towards him.

  “I like you, Danny,” she said. “I feel I can talk to you. It’s nice. Uncomplicated.”

  He turned to face her as they wandered on. “I like you too.”

  “Come for dinner. Tonight. Tell Tasha you’ve pulled a double shift.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know, Stella. I mean, like I said before, me and the missus, well, it’s not going so well right now.”

  “So maybe giving her some space would be the smart thing to do. Come on, Danny. Like I said before, life’s too short. I fancy you, and I think you feel the same way about me. A bit of pasta and maybe snuggle up in front of the TV, see what happens. It’s not the end of the world, is it?”

  He grinned and squeezed her arm between his bicep and chest. “Not even close.”

  17

  How to Vanish a Pistol

  Stella stood at the hob, stirring the pasta sauce. She wasn’t dressed for cooking. Beneath the butcher-striped apron, she’d put together an outfit she felt sure would have Danny right where she wanted him: tight black T-shirt with a scooped neck, orange suede mini-skirt and black tights, and black stilettos. Perfume on the pulse points behind her ears, on the insides of her wrists and a quick mist down the front of the T-shirt for good measure.

  The recipe was one she and Richard had come up with together. Shallots, diced finely and softened in butter and olive oil, with lots of fresh garlic mashed into a paste with sea salt flakes; fresh tomatoes, diced; a tin of baby clams – fresh were better, but she didn’t have any; a sprinkle of dried chilli flakes, and cracked black pepper; and, to finish it off, stir it through the spaghetti and fling some chiffonaded curly parsley over it for that ‘pro-chef’ look. The only wobble came when she added the glassful of white wine to the sauce.

  Everyone said you had to ditch every last drop of alcohol from your house if you were an alcoholic. But Stella believed you couldn’t prepare certain dishes without a splash of wine, especially not strategic meals like this one. She steeled herself as she twisted off the screw top. Looked across to the dresser with the wine glasses. Then shook her head violently. No! Not tonight. Not ever. Not until Richard and Lola are avenged.

  Hutchings came up behind her and encircled her waist with his right arm. The left held a glass of chardonnay. He put his lips against her right ear.

  “Smells fantastic.”

  She smiled, without looking round. “Me, or the clams?”

  “Both. When’s it ready? I’m starving.”

  “You have to be patient. You can’t rush it. Couple more minutes for the spaghetti, then we’re good. Make yourself useful and lay the table. The cutlery’s over there.” She pointed with a free hand to a drawer under the worktop.

  They sat opposite each other at Stella’s scrubbed pine kitchen table to eat.

  “Penny for them?” Danny was looking at her, smiling.

  “What? Oh God, sorry, Danny. Miles away.” She looked at his plate. Empty. Her own too. That’s odd. When did that happen? “I haven’t got anything for pudding, I’m afraid. There might be some ice cream in the freezer, I think. Haven’t looked for a while.”

  “I wasn’t really thinking of ice cream.” He winked, a sleazy expression that he managed to pull off. “Remember what you said earlier?”

  “Oh, that. Pour yourself some more wine, and then why don’t we adjourn to the sofa?”

  She could feel his hand on her breast. He wasn’t a bad kisser either. She reached for his lap and gave him an encouraging squeeze and was rewarded with a sudden inhalation. Now let’s think. How am I going to get what I need out of him? He was panting heavily now. Let’s take him to bed. Maybe the Mata Hari option could be the way forward.

  “Come on, you,” she whispered. “How about trying out my new bed?”

  He tried to manoeuvre himself on top of her, but Stella slapped his arm away. “Oh, no you don’t, soldier,” she said in what she hoped was a commanding tone of voice. “On your back. Now!”

  He grinned up at her, eyes half-closed from the wine, which she’d taken care to keep topping up through the evening. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. Then he complied, arms folded behind his head, watching as she straddled him. She’d kept her T-shirt on, the better to tease him. Now she crossed her arms in front of her, gripped the hem and drew it up and over her head in a single, flowing movement.

  “What’s that?” Danny asked, craning up to look at her left shoulder. “Got a tattoo, have you?”

  “It’s Mimi the Mongoose,” she answered, following his gaze.

  “Like you, is she?”

  She nodded. “Snake killer.”

  He nodded, smiled and reached for her breasts, and after allowing him a quick squeeze, she pushed his hands away. “Wait,” she said, then reached round to unclip her bra, a black lace push-up from La Perla, holding the cups over her breasts before shucking it off. Danny’s eyes widened.

  “They’re lovely, they are,” he managed to gasp out as she leaned forward.

  The sex was perfunctory. He seemed happy enough, and Stella did a little moaning and groaning to keep his pride intact.

  Later, lying awake and smoking, she shifted her weight left and right, nudging him with her elbow until he stirred. As she felt him wake, she resumed her staring at the ceiling, sighing deeply from time to time just to make sure he got the message.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, raising himself on one elbow.

  “Just thinking about how I’m ever going to get out of the filing bloody task force. I swear I’m going insane in there.”

  “Working for Reg the Veg, aren’t you?”

  She sat up and groaned, before putting her head in her hands. “Yes. I am. And it’s really not helping.”

  “I wish I had you on my team. I’m stuffed at the moment.”

  “Why, what’s the problem?”

  “I’m down an assistant armourer. You know you can’t sign out a weapon without two countersignatures?” She nodded. “I’ve got to decommission a bunch of Glocks and collect a replacement consignment. It’s an offsite job and–”

  “And you can’t get away while you’re a man down.”

  “It’s a woman, actually, but yes. That’s basically it.”

  She turned to him and planted a kiss on his lips, then pulled back a little. “You don’t have to be a woman down, you know. I could help you out. Reg’s still off, so I’m basically managing the exhibits room on my own. The brass want me out, I’m sure of it, so I can pretty much please myself what I do.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I told you. Look, tell me about the, what did you call it, decommissioning?”

  Hutchings lay back on the pillow and held his left arm out, cupping his hand and beckoning her down.

  “Come here.”

  She curled herself against him and lay a flat palm on his chest. Right then, sunshine, spill. “I’m all ears,” is what she said aloud.

  “A weapon’s out of warranty, okay? I have to put it beyond use. If it’s one or two at a time, I do it myself if I’m not too busy. Remove the firing pin, maybe crush the muzzle in a vice, a few other things. You have
to be sure because you don’t want an ex-police weapon turning up in a crime. Very bad for the image of the force.”

  “Oh, I imagine the PR team would not be best pleased. Why can’t you do that for the pistols?”

  “There’s twenty-five of them. And like I said, I’m short-staffed. Got my hands full issuing and receiving operational weapons, maintaining them, paperwork. You know.”

  “Oh, I know all about paperwork, believe me.”

  “Well, I have a shitload of it. So, when I can’t decommission them myself, I use this outside company. Frame Security, they’re called, on this industrial estate near Heathrow. They’ve got crushers, furnaces, lathes, the works. They can turn a Glock into a cube of metal and plastic in five minutes. It’s all receipted and documented, just like the chain of custody on an exhibit.”

  “And the new ones?”

  “Come in from Austria on a cargo flight to Heathrow, don’t they? I sign for them, load them into the van and hey ho, away we go, back to the station. Book them all in, check them over, test-fire them, photograph and register the striations on the slugs and we’re done.”

  Stella got out of bed and walked to the window, giving Hutchings a good look, then came back and sat facing him. That’s right, Danny, keep your eyes on my tits. It’ll be easier to agree with what I’m going to ask you next.

  “Let me go.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Let me go and do the drop at Frame Security for you. Then I can pick up the new lot and have them back for you to test-fire.”

  “I wish I could, Stel. Jesus, it wouldn’t half make my life easier. Plus, I think Tasha’s really going to chuck me out this time, and I’m trying to find a flat, so it’s full on. But the regulations–”

  Stella leaned towards him and draped herself around his neck “Please, Danny. Apart from this, my life’s a fucking wasteland of boredom. Give a girl a bit of excitement.” Then she reached between his legs. “I mean another bit of excitement.”

  He groaned. “Okay, fine. Come and see me tomorrow at nine.”

  Stella pushed him back down. And smiled. Her plan to liberate a pistol from the armoury had just taken on a much more satisfactory dimension. Now, the weapon within her grasp wasn’t just a pistol – it was an untraceable pistol.

  After being buzzed in by Danny Hutchings, Stella pushed her way through the security door into the armoury at 8.59 the following morning. Nick Probert, the assistant armourer she’d quizzed about Danny, was working on a G36 assault rifle. He had it stripped on a steel workbench and was working on the rear end of the barrel with a file no bigger than a pencil that rasped with a metallic buzz on each stroke.

  “DI Cole, welcome,” Hutchings said.

  “Happy to help, Sergeant Hutchings,” she replied, keeping her face steady and resisting the temptation to wink.

  The assistant armourer glanced up, then returned to the G36’s barrel.

  “If you’d like to come this way, I can show you the Glocks due for decommissioning.”

  The pistols were lined up on a workbench in two rows of eight and one of nine. Stella ran her eyes over them: twenty-five black-and-charcoal semi-automatics. Each one perfectly capable of sending a person into the next world, but now no longer viable because, like a three-year-and-a-day-old hatchback, they were out of warranty. The arrangement made the ninth pistol in the top row look like something that needed to be tidied away. She reached for it and picked it up. Next to her she sensed the assistant armourer stiffen.

  “Relax,” she said, with a smile. “You’ve cleared them, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “But, you’re not really authorised. Not officially, like.”

  “It’s fine, Nick,” this was Hutchings, who’d joined them at the bench. “DI Cole’s on the admin task force, and she’s got time on her hands, so we’re grateful for her help. Unless you’d rather do the round trip to Heathrow?”

  “No, Sarge.”

  “Well, then. We just need to type up the despatch note and you can be on your way, DI Cole.”

  Stella put the pistol back down on the bench with a thunk.

  “Despatch note?” She tried to keep her voice light: intrigued, rather than worried.

  “Every time we send off a batch of weapons, we issue a document saying what make, model and quantity we’re releasing. It gets countersigned at Frame's and they add a receipt, then everyone has a copy and there’s no possibility of any of the Met’s weapons ending up in the wrong hands.”

  Because we wouldn’t want that, would we, Lola? “Oh, no, of course,” Stella said. “Look, why don’t you give me an old one for reference and a blank and let me do it for you? I bet I’m a faster typist than you.”

  Hutchings frowned. “Better leave that to me. I’d get shot if there was a mix-up. Not that I’m suggesting you’d get it wrong, but it’s on me if there’s a cockup.”

  “No, of course, sure,” Stella said, shrugging. “Just trying to be helpful. Thought you might keep me on as a clerk and not send me back to the basement.”

  Hutchings and his assistant laughed at this.

  Stella and Nick began loading the Glocks into black nylon holdalls with sturdy, two-inch-wide, webbing handles. Hutchings pulled a thinly upholstered swivel chair up to a desk supporting an ageing tower PC and began typing, pursing his lips as his two index fingers poked and prodded at the beige keys.

  Five minutes later he was done. “There,” he said, with an air of triumph, as if he’d completed a doctoral dissertation instead of a single-sheet, weapon decommissioning form.

  Then the door from the corridor slammed back on its hinges and a quartet of black-clad SCO19 officers burst in, kitted out in tactical gear from their Pro-Tec ballistic helmets to bullet-proof vests and down to paramilitary-style, black ankle boots.

  The squad leader, a stocky man made even bulkier by his gear, marched up to the desk.

  “We’re moving on a terrorist group in a flat in Kilburn. I need Glocks times four, G36s ditto and a Remington 870. Ammunition: Hatton rounds, a dozen, spare mag per man for the Glocks, same for the G36s. Better give me half a dozen flash-bangs and tear gas.”

  Stella was forgotten as Hutchings and his assistant moved off, gathering weapons and ammunition in economical, practised movements, skirting round each other among the narrow racked-out lanes that ran through the armoury.

  The armoury echoed with the sound of slides being racked and bolts being worked to clear breeches, then magazines being slotted home into pistol butts and rifle receivers and slapped on their undersides to ensure they were latched. Stella backed away from the front desk, slid down onto the swivel chair in front of the computer and shuffled the mouse back and forth across its peeling, black nylon mat.

  The screen woke up, displaying a grey-and-red form template. Hutchings had left the despatch note open. She scanned up and down the form fields looking for one in particular. There it was.

  QTY. 25

  Stella worked fast, not daring to look round, holding her breath.

  Mouse click.

  Backspace.

  Keystroke.

  File-save-close.

  She hit Print and moved away from the PC to stand by the printer, which ratcheted into life with a series of buzzes, clicks and whirrs and a faint smell of ozone. As soon as the revised version of the despatch note slid into the tray she whisked it out, folded it into four and stuffed it into her trouser pocket.

  She looked over her shoulder, breathing hard. The firearms officers were swiping their ID cards over an electronic reader, which bleeped as each set of weapons was registered as signed out to the officer who matched the ID in the central database. Then they each signed a firearms issuance form, and Hutchings and his assistant countersigned. She resumed her former position, standing out of the way at the end of a shelving rack, waiting for the activity to die down.

  As quickly as they’d burst in to the armoury, the four men were gone, their boots thumping as they ran back down the corridor to
their armed response vehicles: at Paddington Green, silver BMW 5 Series in full pursuit tune.

  Hutchings took the sheaf of signed and countersigned weapons issuance forms and filed them in a black steel cabinet.

  “Bit of excitement for you, there, DI Cole. Now you can see why being short-staffed in here makes my life difficult. Let me just print that despatch note for you and you can be on your way.”

  “No need. I did it while you were equipping the commandos,” she said, with a smile. Look.” She fished the folded paper out of her pocket and flourished it in the air. She pointed behind her at the bench. “All ah need’s mah six-shooters and ah reck’n ah’ll be on mah way, pardner.”

  Her comedy Annie Oakley accent did the trick.

  “Jesus, is that how you get the bad guys to break, because it certainly worked on me. Here, let me get you the invoice and collection note for the new Glocks.”

  With the paperwork dealt with, Hutchings seemed happy enough to help her and Nick load the Glocks into the holdalls, five to a bag, five bags in total. Leaving his number two in charge, Hutchings helped Stella lug the heavy, clanking bags down to the rear of the station and over to a dirty and battered white Ford transit van.

  “No armoured car?” Stella asked as Hutchings unlocked the rear doors and swung them open to reveal a plain loadspace lined with unvarnished plywood, sharp-splintered gashes gouged into its floor.

  “Ha! No. No markings at all, if you notice. Thinking is, it’s better to go under the radar. This looks like any old builder’s van, doesn’t it? Practically invisible.” He handed her a sheet of A4 with two addresses typed on it in capitals, one for Frame Security, the other for the cargo terminal at Heathrow. The latter had flight details below it. “When you get to Frame's, there’s a guard on the gate. Show your warrant card and the despatch note and say you’ve got a D61 order from the Paddington Green armourer. The guys on the gate all know me, but if there’s a relief or they’re doing a security audit, they might have tightened up. When you’re in, ask for Maurice. He’s the manager.”