Directive RIP by Stuart Parker
13
‘Morning Breeze!’
‘Morning!’
Breeze did not look up quickly enough from the beautiful body to catch the face. And although the tattoo he was looking for was not on the flip side, he could not resist following her progress into Police Headquarters. Early twenties, foot patrol, likely just out of the Academy – Breeze could really see the difference.
It was the beginning of another day with the garment penetrators. Breeze was leaning against the brickwork halfway up the entrance steps, the sunshine beating down justifying sunglasses more than missing persons cum homicide investigation ever would. Most of the day shift had already filtered up the stairs. The stragglers still coming moved with greater urgency, meaning Breeze had to be on his toes.
In the past couple of days he had spotted plenty of tattoos. The usual array of barbed flowers and Celtic symbols. Even the odd serpent or dragon. But nothing sufficiently satanic, unfinished or positioned. If he didn’t find the right to tattoo to justify this course of action his career was as good as over. Nashy had already given him an admonishing glance after she became aware of his involvement, even though she had been wearing her own pair of garment busters at the time. Circular black lenses and black frames, the military had not sacrificed fashion for efficiency.
‘Detective Sergeant Burres.’
The voice caught Breeze by surprise. The female police officer had come up the steps quickly, while he was still preoccupied with that other officer’s entry into HQ. She had a cute, rounded face; short, shiny black hair reveling in its morning rinse and comb; delicate white skin that had been kept out of the sun’s way; and a slight stature that would have required another two steps up to take her to eye level - the strong, confident eyes, however, still had an impact from low down. Despite this proximity, Breeze had an equally hard time placing her as with the previous police officer; there was, nevertheless, something particularly familiar about her.
‘Hello,’ he said unconvincingly, wishing he had a name he could throw in.
‘I get a lot of that,’ she said perceptively. ‘People who are sure they know me. Perhaps in a previous life. In your case it was almost true.’
Despite himself, Breeze caught a glimpse of cleavage as he took off the garment busters. And he couldn’t help registering what he saw either. Firm, bold and an endearing birthmark or two. He carefully tucked the garment busters into a breast pocket, readjusting his eyes on the woman’s low cut blouse.
‘You’re the dispatcher,’ said Breeze, finally twigging.
‘That’s right. Eva Shaley. You took out three bad guys with an evidence bag over your head.’
‘I may never live it down.’
‘Sorry, I couldn’t send you any help when you needed it.’
Another woman was heading up the stairs. At fifty-something an unlikely suspect. Still, Breeze gave Shaley an uncommitted shrug, not sure how keen he was to get cornered into a conversation.’
‘I’ve got twenty minutes. How about a coffee?’
There was an intriguing sense of purpose in Shaley’s voice. And her eyes didn’t let him go.
‘Okay,’ he said and justified it with the thought that loitering outside police headquarters any further would likely have raised suspicion and walking off in the company of a fellow member of the force was a useful way to dispel it.
He quickly became suspicious of the twenty minutes. After all, it took a long ten minutes to reach the Barnaby Brasserie, not one of the regular cop hangouts. The prices and layout were respectable enough but the route took in the kind of backstreets that only the couriers knew about.
Purple tablecloths, red menus and black chairs, the decor was more stylish than cohesive. Shaley chose the furthest table from the Barnaby Brasserie’s solitary apron. The young man was preparing the sandwich station for the day.
‘The lattes here are very good,’ recommended Shaley.
‘Sure,’ said Breeze.
She called out the order, looked over the pastries in the glass case below the counter and then got down to the point.
‘Did you notice the position vacant sign in the window?’
‘No.’
‘It’s the sort of thing you might want to start noticing.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Your fellow cops aren’t backing you up. Not even your partner. Your outburst at the morning briefing has only exacerbated the bad blood.’
‘Comes with the job,’ said Breeze dismissively.
‘Does your job come with an out strategy?’
‘Seems like you’re selling one.’
Shaley smirked conspiratorially. ‘Let’s just say a police dispatcher is a good friend to have. They get to know all the dirty inner workings of the Department. The kind of relationship taxi drivers have with the city.’
The apron wearing counter hand hurriedly dropped off the lattes on his way to returning to the cutting board. Breeze was intrigued enough in this conversation that he didn’t even acknowledge his presence.
‘Why are we having this conversation?’
‘Smart, brave, ostracized, you might be a good friend for a dispatcher to have.’Shaley blew on the latte and then sipped off the scum.
‘Okay,’ said Breeze, ‘I’m listening.’
‘Sure, but just know that with your credibility the way it is, if you try to turn this conversation against me, nobody will listen to you. I’m just saying that an astute dispatcher knows how to think things through.’
‘Okay.’ Breeze went to his latte, trying to give the impression he could be as interested in that as anything else.
‘One-shot Greenstreet is on the take and I know where he keeps the stash.’
‘Senior Detective Jason Greenstreet?’
‘He was closest to you when you made your Docklands call. Sitting on his stash like a mother-hen, dreaming of the day when it’s big enough to hatch. But I know the type, a chicken trying to give birth to an elephant.’
‘Drug money?’ Breeze didn’t really care about the stash’s origins. He was a cop and cops asked questions – the way kids sucked on thumbs.
‘He has his hands in Lester Tony’s pockets and most of his competitors’ as well. He’s not a cop, he’s a toll-booth for criminals.’
‘And you think I’m clean enough to be trusted with a bit of dirty work?’
Shaley scanned the café in case it had suddenly grown ears and lowered her voice as though finally there was something she considered worth keeping a secret. ‘I trust you.’
Breeze was unmoved. ‘Usually any time would be the right time to rip off One-shot’s fool’s gold. The funny thing is now I’m on a case involving a secret organisation with a whole switchboard of tentacles.’
Shaley was deadpan. ‘Wow.’
‘Maybe you did send out my call for back up at the Docklands. And maybe you aren’t trying to set me up here.’ Breeze put on the garment busters. ‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings but bait has an ugly aftertaste. Excuse me.’ He got up, snapping open his cell phone and making a call to Riley as he stepped away from the table.
‘HQ is so far a negative,’ said Breeze as soon as Riley answered.
‘Try the Special Operations Group,’ came the jaded reply. ‘You’d better do it with a low profile ‘cause some of them might recognise your brand of glasses.’
‘Got it.’ Breeze closed off the call. He pocketed the phone then rested the glasses on his forehead. ‘Coming?’
Shaley slowly shook her head. ‘I’m not as excited by my job as you seem to be.’ She flicked her latte glass. ‘I’m going to finish this in peace.’
Breeze felt around his pockets for some change to cover his.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Shaley. ‘If I thought you had a disposable income, we probably wouldn’t be talking. Think about what I’ve said. If you want to see your kid in France, this job could be the quickest way to do it.’
Breeze nodded, trying to conceal the surprise that she knew such thin
‘Senior Detective Greenstreet.’ Although it barely even matched the dial tone for life, the dour voice was exactly the sound Breeze wanted to hear.
‘One-shot, it’s Breeze. We’ve got to talk.’
Greenstreet was fun to talk with as long as you didn’t believe in pleasantries. ‘When?’
Breeze didn’t hear the gunshot and he didn’t initially feel any pain – but his first experience at being shot was not going to be as anticlimactic as that. Blood sprayed across the windows of the closest of the parked cars. Surreally, he knew it was his. Still, if he was going to react to it appropriately it would required the kind of acting aspiring film stars put into their drama classes. While this was going through his mind his body was hitting the ground hard. The hands that might have cushioned the fall were tangled up somewhere else. Breeze realised with a chill his reaction to the bullet was as out of his hands as had been the bullet’s trajectory in the first place.
The way the blood pumped from the hole in his shoulder reminded him of bleeding oil out of a car engine. Slow and think and with the inevitable promise of trickling dry. A hand was on the scene now, every finger volunteering to do the plugging. One of the five found the hole. It sunk in deep; warm, sticky blood seeped around the edges. Meanwhile, emerging from the core like a giant moon rising up from a desert was an excruciating, jaw-locking pain.
He must have been on his back. He was looking up into cloud. There was someone standing beside him. He noticed the gun then. The familiar Heckler and Koch light arms pistol. Gripped with a finger on the trigger. Then the tattoo. A devil’s head on a coiled serpent’s body. Bold and black. As was the scrawl below: “Bad Devil Bitch.” Visible within the outline of a G-string. So, the garment busters had hung on. The tattoo looked finished as far as Breeze could tell. He wondered if it had been Masoo Benzona’s final act alive. Who was this woman? A Praying Mantis of sorts, receptive to her mate before unleashing a fast death. Breeze tried to look up at the face. He got as far as her gold navel piercing. Death was coming for him now and this was better than most final images of the world. Why bother looking the killer in the eye at the expense of her hour glass figure?
‘Looks painful, Detective Burres.’ It wasn’t the voice of a woman destined for sleepless nights of remorse for murderous deeds. ‘The problem is you’ve got to get to about ninety years of age before dying stops getting painful and who’s got the patience for that?’
She was going to finish him off. But he must have already been pretty far gone for her to be this comfortable having a chat.
‘In your case,’ she added, ‘not me.’
Well in control. Breeze’s forehead obligingly presenting itself for the coup de grace. However, beyond the forehead a distant memory was flickering to life. ‘The Titanic’s iceberg was a model killer,’ the young Breeze’s father was saying in his harsh French, stroking the boy’s head as they strolled. Nice’s stony shoreline – a summer’s day buried under the grim weight of hundreds of subsequent summer days. ‘It rose out of the water with the power to sink the unsinkable and then it slipped back into the water undetected and free. Breathtaking. Do not forget that lesson, Burres.’
Breeze’s eyes flicked higher now. The garment busters took him through the ski mask to the steady eyes, narrow cheeks, and ambivalent mouth. Flesh and blood. A bullet would take her. Not the Titanic’s iceberg.
It was disdain for her lack of perfection. It was the hand that had been firing guns since the days of that long neglected memory.
The movement was executed outside the realm of intentions and plans. He lifted his leg up to his chest. His hand closed on the handle and trigger of the Remington in the leg holster. Like the memory of his father, the Remington burst out of its inactivity with vivid ferocity and violence.