Inside View by Kerry J Donovan

Author:Kerry J Donovan [Donovan, Kerry J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-10-22T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Friday 20th September

On Friday morning, I woke early and spent an hour in the accommodation block’s gym throwing free weights around and sweating through abdominal crunches and curls. I worked upper body and core only. The legs would have to wait until I found a local swimming pool.

In the canteen, I limited myself to a large bowl of muesli and two slices of toast smeared with that greasy stuff the advertisers try to pass off as butter. Washed down with a glass of fresh orange juice and a mug of coffee, it filled a hole, and gave me a decent start to the day.

At 07:55, back in the empty cage, I hit the spacebar on my keyboard. My screen blinked once before expanding into the black-and-white logo—royal crown to the left, NCA lettering to the right. Very understated, very “now”.

First order of the day, checking the schedules of my new colleagues. I hovered my fingers over the keyboard and looked at the empty desks around me.

The desk furthest away, tidy and clean, as befitting its owner, seemed a reasonable enough first target, and I called up Rob Cruikshank’s desk calendar. He’d booked himself and his team, Hannah and Drew, on a trip to Liverpool, and had borrowed Clint Schneider from X Delasse for the day.

Why was the impeccably dressed forty-two-year-old with the highly polished shoes headed for Merseyside, where he’d stand out more clearly than Prince Charles in a betting shop?

The Cage remained ghost-like as I read the detailed and well-presented file; it took me less than forty minutes. If e-paperwork was anything to go by, Rob Cruikshank’s note-keeping was as impeccable as his dress sense.

The case dealt with drugs trafficking in the north of England. Although based in Liverpool, the targeted gang’s geographical footprint covered Blackpool, Chester, Wrexham, and Greater Manchester. Since the NCA’s remit covered the whole of the UK and targeted organised crime, the Merseyside Police had contacted the NCA, and the OCTF took the lead.

Softly spoken and well mannered, Rob Cruickshank struck me as the cybercrimes type who’d be at home presenting crime figures and arrest statistics to the NCA management team. I couldn’t see him pulling sweat-stained drug dealers off the mean streets of Wrexham and feeding them into a police van, but perhaps I was doing the man a disservice.

Freddie Bowen hustled in at 09:12, looking harried and more dishevelled than usual. He sat behind his screen, head down, avoiding eye contact. I took the opportunity to work a suspect.

“Freddie?”

“Yes, Sarge?”

“Where is everybody?”

He searched his screen for a moment before answering.

“Bee and X are still in Maidstone. Hookie and Bandage are in Paddington Green. Rob and the others are in Liverpool on a drugs op. I have no idea what’s happened to Chloe.”

“Liverpool? Nobody told me.”

Freddie shifted uneasily in his chair.

“They’ve been planning it for ages. I’m guessing nobody read you in on the op, what with you being the new boy, and … your leg an’ all.” He finished by adding a shrug and an apologetic half-smile.

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