The First Stella Cole Boxset Read online

  Back in training, she’d been rubbish at the unarmed defence tactics course. But her superiors had said, even as a graduate on the fast track, she had to rotate through all the major roles, including firearms. That called for the ability to defend oneself and, if necessary, take down an assailant or a suspect who was resisting arrest, or attacking an officer or an officer’s colleague.

  Her UDT instructor, a bullet-headed, ex-army type everyone called Rocky, had taken her to one side after another session where she’d landed on her arse, this time with a split lip into the bargain.

  “Listen, DS Cole,” he said. “You’re a woman, so you’re not as strong as the men. I get that. But you’re skinny too. And short. Some of those others, well, they’re on the chunky side. DS Mills over there, she did aikido for team GB at the Olympics. You need a little helping hand. Give me thirty quid and see me here tonight. Six thirty sharp.”

  So, she’d fished two creased notes out of her purse, a twenty and a ten, handed them over, and returned to the classroom for the next theory session.

  At half past six, she went back to the gym. All the physical education classes ended at six, and the place was dark. She pushed through the double doors and called out.

  “Hello? Sarge?” Nobody called Sergeant Doug Stevens “Rocky” to his face. Not unless they wanted to end up flat on theirs. She flipped the light switches down, one after the other, and waited while the huge pendant lamps hummed into life before drenching the gym in cold, white light.

  From behind her, a strong, hard hand clamped across her mouth, stifling her scream. She smelled aftershave and sweat. Her attacker wrenched her backwards until she was leaning against his chest. His right hand came round and into her eyeline. It was clenched around a dark cylinder.

  Then the man released her, pushed her upright again and came round so she could see him.

  “You’re dead, DS Cole,” he said. “Again. Look, I got something for you. A little helper.”

  He held out his right hand. Lying across the palm was a dark-brown leather tube about four inches long by maybe an inch in diameter. One end was closed with a circle of the same brown leather. The other had a narrow strap fixed over it with a brass press stud.

  She took it from him. It was surprisingly heavy. She looked at him. He was grinning.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Let’s call it a change purse. Undo the strap and take a look.”

  She flicked the press stud with her thumbnail and tipped the cylinder over towards her other palm. Out tumbled thirty one-pound coins; a couple rolled off her palm and clattered onto the gym’s wooden floor.

  “Sorry. I don’t get it,” she said, bending to pick up the errant coins.

  “Don’t you? Load it up again, and I’ll show you what it’s for.” Stella dropped the coins back into the tube and clipped the strap over again. “Right. Come with me.”

  He led her over to a realistic male mannequin. It was a training aid they’d nicknamed “Marv” after a Hollywood film producer who’d gone apeshit on a plane. Some kind of legal high he’d popped in the First-Class lounge hadn’t agreed with the free booze, and he’d attacked a stewardess.

  “I don’t want to hit him again, Sarge,” she said. “It really hurts. In case you forgot, I’m not the one representing her country in ai-bloody-kido.”

  “Well, I do want you to hit him. But first, I want you to hold this.”

  He held out the roll of coins.

  Insight dawned in Stella’s brain.

  She enclosed the leather cylinder in her palm, then wrapped her fingers and thumb around it. Opened them out again and played with the grip, just a little. Then she squeezed it tight. It felt good: not cold, exactly, just cool, and surprisingly soft. She looked at Rocky. He was grinning again, his eyes twinkling in the light from the overheads, the corners creased with what looked like genuine good humour.

  She turned to face the mannequin, pulled her arm back in a short compression then struck out, straight and fast, as she’d been instructed, into Marv’s throat. The soft silicone deformed as her knuckles connected, and the mannequin rocked back on its stand. She looked right at Stevens.

  “I like it,” she said, before whirling round and hammering her fist into the centre of Marv’s face, feeling a satisfying click from inside the flesh, indicating that she’d broken his nose.

  “Of course,” Stevens said, “it’s not exactly kosher for a detective to carry an offensive weapon, and any defence brief worth their salt would have a field day if their client claimed you’d thumped him with a home-made cosh. But I can’t see the harm in a change purse, can you? I mean, what if you need some tampons from the machine in the ladies’?”

  “Yeah, because that’s all us girls ever do with our spare change, you sexist pig!” she said, but she was smiling. “Maybe it’s called a change purse because it changes a person.”

  “I hope so, DS Cole. Those psychos out there make me look like a fucking new man, I tell you.”

  After standing under the hot water for twenty minutes, she went into the bedroom and stood in front of the mirror on the outside of the wardrobe door. Jesus, Stel, where’ve your boobs gone? All this running is fine for your fitness, but you look like a boy. Right. Pie and chips in the canteen every day until there was a bit more flesh on her bones. KitKats and Mars Bars, too. Full-fat lattes and kebabs after the pub. Shit! The pub.

  Every addict would tell you, it was best to stay away from places that served alcohol. Especially those whose raison d’être was to sell as much of the stuff as possible. Restaurants? OK, at a pinch. Cocktail bars and pubs? No way, José. But that was where they did half their business. Mooching in mid-afternoon when the hardened boozers were nursing their sixth or seventh “lunchtime” pint and ready to offer a bit of information about some stolen laptops or who was into kiddie porn for the price of a few more. Or sitting around with your team at the end of the shift, swapping war stories or comparing notes. Well, it was orange and soda from now on, or J2O, or one of those other kids’ drinks. The force was home to enough recovering alcoholics for this, at least, to be OK.

  She got dressed. Functional, white Gap underwear, boot-cut jeans, white shirt, sky-blue knitted tank top, leather biker jacket, and a pair of low-heeled, leather ankle boots. She’d started out in CID wearing higher heels. But after catching one in a grating while chasing a suspect down an alley and going her length on the piss-soaked cobbles, she’d given up on that particular style of footwear, even if it did leave her, at five-three, the shortest member of the syndicate.

  She loaded her jacket pockets with her gear, jamming her little helper well down into the right hip pocket, and went downstairs. She could hear little snuffles from Lola’s room where her precious child slept within arm’s length of her nanny, all paid for out of Richard’s life insurance.

  She dawdled over her breakfast of bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes, toast and marmalade – start as we mean to go on, eh, Stel? – but it was still only five when she loaded her mug, plate, knife and fork into the dishwasher. She wasn’t due in until eight for her briefing with HR, then her return-to-work meeting with Collier.

  She went into the spare bedroom. It had been her incident room. It contained a cheap desk from IKEA, a swivel chair and a filing cabinet in battleship-grey steel. One wall was covered with cork floor tiles, on which she’d pinned photographs, street plans and documents. No red woollen strings, though–that was strictly for TV super cops. She’d spent days on end in this little room, working her way through bottles of soft, fruity, seductive Pinot Grigio as she pored over witness statements and media reports. She’d accepted the verdict. She’d accepted Deacon’s guilt. Her therapist had helped her to move past her blazing desire for vengeance. She was a police officer. A detective inspector. A bloody good one. And wasn’t going to let Deacon destroy any more of her life. She would commemorate Richard’s life by being the best bloody detective London had ever seen. But still, she analysed.

  The questions
hung over her like a cloud of biting flies. Why had he done it? Was he on his phone? Was he drunk? High? What was he doing on that quiet residential street in Putney when she knew for a fact his normal stamping ground was over in east London, Shoreditch way? Or was it more than just a FATACC? Was it a deliberate attack? A killing? Had somebody hired Deacon or somehow coerced him into doing what he’d done? She’d not been able – or allowed – to enter Paddington Green until signed off ready for duty by the FMO, so she’d not been able to look at any of the official files. She knew Collier would have a fit if he discovered what she was planning, so the whole thing needed to be handled off the books.

  She wandered over to the collaged cork tiles and stretched out her right hand. She trailed her fingertips, with their bitten nails, over a photograph in the centre of the display. It showed Richard, her partner of seven years, holding their beautiful baby girl when she was two-and-a-half months.

  “Oh, Lola,” she moaned under her breath. “Why did he kill Daddy and not stop? How did he get away with it? Mummy’s going to find out.” She leaned closer and placed a soft kiss on the photo. “Then Mummy’s going to see justice really done. And that means Mummy needs to be very clever.”

  5

  Light Duties

  Finally! Stella left the house at seven thirty, black leather gauntlets in one hand, helmet slung over the wrist of the same arm. She’d checked on Lola, who was still asleep, with Kristina snoring gently in the single bed beside her. Good as gold, compared to the stories she’s heard of babies driving their mothers half-mad with sleeplessness. She double-locked the door, then spent forty-five more seconds twisting the key against the stop and pulling on the brushed steel knob. Finally, muttering under her breath and biting her bottom lip, she turned away and went to the bike.

  Ever since the hit and run, she’d not been able to even think of buying another car. But eventually, she’d realised that some form of personal transport was a necessity. Maybe for her eco-conscious girlfriends, public transport was good enough, but she valued her independence too much to stand around waiting for someone else to decide her needs mattered more than theirs.

  She’d ridden bikes in her twenties. Hung out with guys who owned big Suzukis and Yamahas. Ended up buying herself a Harley-Davidson. Three months after the accident, and a newly car-phobic, thirty-two-year-old widow, she’d found herself hanging around outside a bike shop on Albert Embankment, staring through the window like a kid at a sweetshop. She might have stayed there all day had it not been for the hunky dude in a white T-shirt with a vintage Indian logo who wandered out and came to stand next to her. He swept his long, dark, but decidedly non-greasy hair away from his stubbled face.

  “Pretty aren’t they?” he said.

  “I don’t want pretty,” she said, giving him a trademark glare that her pre-marriage girlfriends said used to burn guys in nightclubs who only wanted a dance.

  He blushed. “No, sorry, I didn’t mean because you’re a, you know–”

  “Chick?”

  “No! A woman, I was going to say. They are though, aren’t they? Pretty?”

  Bless him. He was trying. And she did want a bike. And yes, they were pretty. Especially that one.

  “Let’s go inside. I want to have a closer look.”

  He led her inside, probably relieved this hard-core feminist hadn’t castrated him on the spot.

  The row of second-hand bikes started innocently enough with some small-wheeled scooters that she seriously reckoned she could outrun on foot. One had flower stickers applied to the helmet space under the seat. No thank you, very much. Running from right to left, the machinery began to gain weight and sex appeal, at least for Stella. A couple of two-fifties, a three-seven-five … moving up to five-hundreds, and then the serious stuff.

  A Triumph Speedmaster, looking like some custom hot rod built in a garage. Matte-black, big, blocky, black-and-chrome twin-pot engine. Eight-sixty-five ccs. A Honda Fireblade, resplendent in white, orange and red Repsol racing livery. A whisper under a thousand ccs. A silver Suzuki Hayabusa sports bike. Thirteen-forty ccs.

  She pointed at the Triumph.

  “I like that one.”

  His brow crinkled. “It’s a nice bike, but quite powerful for–”

  Oops! Caught out again. “For?”

  “A beginner rider. Have you got a bike licence? Cos you can ride a scooter on a standard driving licence.”

  She fixed him with a stare that had quieted football hooligans and drunks across half of London.

  “One, I have a full bike licence. Two, my last ride was a Harley Sportster. Three, I want a test ride. Now. Please.”

  Clearly out of his depth with Stella, the salesman ran a hand over his silky mane and tried one final time.

  “OK, great. You’re the boss.”

  First, she bought new riding gear. Matte-black Bell open-face helmet, belted leather jacket – thick and protective but styled more like something you’d wear over trousers – black gloves and a pair of ankle boots.

  After showing the guy her driving licence, including that precious symbol that indicated she was good for anything on two wheels, he had no option but to let her wheel the big black Triumph out of the shop.

  “You bend it, you mend it,” were his parting words, as she slung her right leg over the broad saddle. She nodded. Twenty minutes later, she was back inside the showroom, signing finance forms.

  And now she was riding the Triumph back to work. She thumbed the ignition switch. The big engine coughed and then roared into life before settling into its familiar off-kilter idle.

  She toed the gear selector down into first with a satisfying clunk that she felt through the boot sole, then eased out the clutch, lifted her feet onto the foot pegs as she crossed the pavement, and slipped out into the traffic.

  Stella parked the bike in the underground car park beneath Paddington Green Police Station, enjoying the amplified blat of the exhaust as she passed the hard, sound-reflecting concrete walls. With the Triumph locked and levered onto the custom centre-stand she’d had fitted, Stella pushed through the door that led to the bare staircase up to the main floors.

  After stowing her gear under her desk, on which someone had put a vase of daffodils, she went to the toilet to brush out her hair and apply a bit of lipstick.

  At one minute to eight, she knocked on the door of Linda Heath, the occupational health manager, and went in. The woman behind the desk had cropped blonde hair and bright red lipstick. Her eyes popped wide as she looked up and saw Stella.

  “Stella! Wow! You look great. Come in. Have a seat. Can I get you a coffee? Tea? Water?”

  “It’s fine, thanks, Linda. I had a coffee before I left the house.”

  Stella could feel about a million butterflies fighting to escape her stomach. Her palms were sweaty and she rubbed them on her jeans, hoping the woman who could help or hinder her re-entry into the Homicide Command wouldn’t see the nervous gesture. Fat chance!

  “Everything OK?” Linda asked, her brow creasing with concern. She had a buff cardboard A4 folder in front of her on the immaculate desk. Now she placed her palms flat on top of it. A waft of her perfume made its way across the desk: sweet, light and floral. Girly.

  “I’m fine. Really. Just, you know, it’s been a year and I’m a little–” What? Freaked out? Fucked up? “–you know…”

  “Of course.” The frown of concern morphed effortlessly into a compassionate smile, head tilted ten degrees to the left, mouth curved into a half-smile-half-pout that said, I understand, you lost everything and drank your way to the bottom, now I’m here to offer a lifeline to the top again. “Well, how are you feeling?” She opened the folder. Stella craned her neck to see what was written on the top sheet. It was a questionnaire of some sort.

  “In general? Or about coming back to work?”

  “Oh, in general. We were all so sad when Adam,” she faltered, then regained her composure, “that is, Detective Chief Superintendent Collier, gave us the news
about the accident.”

  “I’m okay. I still miss Richard. But I go to meetings and I see a counsellor every month, so,” she shook her head, then shrugged, “on the road to recovery.”

  Heath’s brow puckered for a second on “Richard”, then she replastered her professional smile of concern onto her face. “That’s good. You’re so brave. Now,” Linda’s voice took on a brisk, no-nonsense tone, “I have to run through a little form with you, and then we can move on to discuss your new duties.”

  Stella frowned. Good. Now we start. “Wait. What? What do you mean, ‘new duties’?”

  “Let’s do my little questionnaire first, and then all will be revealed,” she said, in a theatrical, stagey voice presumably meant to reassure Stella.

  “First of all, the basics, just so everyone can be sure I interviewed the right officer. You are Detective Inspector Stella Kathryn Cole.”

  “You know I am.”

  “Yes, but as I said, for the record.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm. You didn’t take Richard’s name when you got married?”

  “Obviously not. Is that relevant?”

  “No, no,” Linda said brightly. “Very modern of you. Warrant number?”

  Stella reeled off the letter and seven digits of her warrant number.

  “Good! Well, at least we can be sure you are who you say you are. Let’s get down to it, shall we?”

  The next ten minutes passed as Stella answered a set of questions about her attitude to returning to work, stress levels, and basic physical fitness. Then Linda straightened in her chair.

  “Now, question five. How would you rate your mood, on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely low and ten is perfectly happy?”

  Stella leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest.