Liverpool
5 p.m.
April 17th
Three miles away in a house on Croxteth Road, Sefton Park Walter, Wally to his friends, Tyson held the hands of his only child as they swung back the green, iron garden gate and arrived home, damp and laughing.
She was a sweet freckle faced seven year old girl. He held her book bag and sports bag in his other hand. She had been at after school club playing football and Wally had been watching her play. In spite of being small she was incredibly tenacious as a player. Wally wondered whether his love of football and lack of a son had begun to turn her into a tomboy.
They laughingly sang their way through the front door, dripping onto the hall carpet. He loved being able to collect her from school and the DIC work allowed him that most of the year and this year, at forty-five it was his last year for active rota.
He was feeling a little guilty as he’d been alacritous about his work today. His partner, Ginny, was down with the flu. Though he’d logged on, in his loft, in the morning and caught the traffic about the four intruders through day, including the call to check the marina, when he printed the four pictures, he’d been
shopping since and every time he’d meant to check again Ginny had called for some TLC.
With Tara home he decided to quickly nip down and check the marina.
He settled Tara with a snack and TV, fussed around Ginny and told her he had a ‘visual check’ to do. He kissed her hot forehead and grabbing diplomatic pass, intruder photos and his coat, no gun, he got into his little blue Fiesta and drove towards the Liverpool Marina and the Mersey. It was five o’ clock when he set out and it didn’t take him long to get there.
The marina watch man, a keen sailor in his mid twenties, was just finishing up in the office when he noted the red Fiesta enter the car park. He sighed as the tall, blonde curly haired figure in the beige duffle coat headed straight for him. He had a sinking feeling as the man drew out what looked like some sort of badge from his pocket, in readiness.
Glancing at his watch he set his face to helpful as the man entered the office.
“Evening I’m a civil service employee doing a Marina check for new arrivals.” Wally handed over the credentials. It took the watch man a moment to read it.
“Civil service?”
Wally raised an eye brow in a conspiratorial way.
“Oh I see.” The watch man handed the credentials back.
Wally drew out the pictures.
“Have you seen any of these men?”
Each picture drew a blank until they got to the sketch of Cobb.
“That looks a bit like a guy who got here after lunch. He’s American. He’s just gone out.”
“Just?”
“Yeah about ten minutes ago. He had a bag with him. He’ll probably be out tonight, stay in a hotel.”
“Can you show me his boat?”
It was Wally’s turn to sigh. Given the DIC e-mail traffic he’d read he knew these men were on the move and was annoyed at having missed him. He was sure that Charlie was moving on. Still he’d check the boat and when he called in he’d not mention why he hadn’t checked earlier.
The watch man and Wally passed through the punch key locked gate, down the jetty and towards Charlie’s boat. The lights were off. The little boat sat bobbing in the early evening dusky gloom.
“Are you sure he went out.”
Wally hesitated, no weapon on him, but in Wally’s case he only ever got it out to clean it.
“Wait here.” He said sternly and climbed onto the boat. Charlie hadn’t locked it.
Wally gingerly entered the cabin. He saw the unwashed utensils and plates. The cabin reeked of greasy food. The bunk had been slept in. He called the watch man in.
“Hey you come in here.”
The watch man clambered onto the boat and stepped down head bowed into the cabin.
“What?”
“Watch me as I search.”
“Why?”
“In case I find something incriminating and the man I’m looking for, if caught, says I planted it.”
“I’m not sure about this. I might need to call someone.”
Wally was withering in his reply.
“Just do as I say.”
“Is the man in trouble?”
“Not yet, but you could say that as a person he is trouble.”
Wally began searching,
He found the stubbed ‘Lucky’ on a saucer, recalling Michael Dewey’s e-mail sketch from the match flare that morning. The man was a smoker. There were no bags, no passports and no gun. There were no personal effects, which struck a discordant note with Wally. If this was a regular American tourist where was the camera, the set of personal items and the paraphernalia of someone away from home? It was much too suspicious. Wally had made up his mind to get home, e-mail DIC centre and call the police to the boat.
Cobb, white plastic bag with prawn fried rice, duck, pancakes, vegetables, Ho-Sin sauce and a six pack of Budweiser in one hand and his backpack in the other noted the lights on in the marina office past the hours of business listed on the door. He tried the door handle and found the office open. Charlie smelt trouble. He double checked his handiwork on the CCTV camera control, still in place. The young man probably never checked it. He left the office his senses alert and made his way to the punch key locked gate. He looked along the jetties and seeing where his boat was, with the lights on he narrowed his eyes and flared his nostrils making a face that would have made a snake flinch.
He squatted down in the shadows by the gate, putting aside the take away and beer. In the last light of day the dull metal of his Russian PSS pistol swallowed the low lances of the setting sun. He punched in the access number, eased through and closed the gate with deadly silence. Treading the boards towards the edges with soft silent steps he honed in on the yellow beacon of his boat lights. There were no lights visible on other boats, he noted. He saw the shadows behind the boat’s thin curtains.
He could have climbed onto the boat, but knew better. They’d be coming out and he’d save himself some cleaning up. He lay down on the drizzle wet boards, hidden by the prow of the boat. They’d exit via the stern of the boat and move to his right back towards the gate.
Wally and the watch man did emerge, clambered off the boat, Wally doing most of the talking. Cobb heard the words ‘police’ and ‘alert’ and ‘CCTV’ footage’. He let them get four metres down the jetty and gave each a silenced shot in the back of the head within a second. Each victim pitched forward, damaged beyond repair and spiralling downwards brain dead they fell to earth near lifeless. Cobb was on his feet in a moment he stood over them and put a round in each heart. It had taken mere seconds to stop the life in them simply because of their inconvenience. The young watch man and Wally lay on the jetty like landed fish in the last gasps of drowning, small, pathetic after death twitches moving muscles as the last nervous signals pulsed and faded in their finished bodies.
The last light of the day saw Charley busy. Glad for the harbour water, simply for hiding the bodies and washing the blood he got to work. He checked the bodies for identification and car keys. He didn’t pause to muse over the pictures of himself and the others he took from Wally’s corpse and the even more curious diplomatic badge with Wally’s picture on it; he put them in his pocket with a definite view to looking at them later. He took what little money they had, frowning at Wally’s wallet pictures of Tara and Ginny. Who sent a family man to deal with a killer like him?
He found the cars, cut the tyres from the spares, took the jacks and rims for weight. The Sheets and duvet cover from his boat wrapped the bodies, tied by spare mooring rope from his boat. Weighted he lowered them into the marina waters, below the jetty, he knew the weight wasn’t quite enough and hoped they’d be hidden an extra day bobbing against the underside of the wood. He washed the jetty down quickly with three buckets, sloshing the blood away.
Looking around he saw the lights of the city, tens of thousands of people, but not one near enough to witness his actions. Cobb went back to the gate, picked up the now cold take away and his rucksack.
One remote key blipped a Peugeot 207 hatch back. The other key opened the old red Fiesta. He drove this out the gate and parked it on Hill Street. He walked back to the Marina, always looking around. He locked the office. Happily settled in the Peugeot 207 he drove away, Manchester bound.
‘So much for the quiet night’ in he thought pointing the car towards the M62. As he drove he wondered how the authorities had so quickly got pictures of all of them. He knew his picture was a sketch, seemingly lit by a glow? Could they have seen them that morning? It was impossible surely? Charlie was suddenly very worried. The whole situation looked and smelled like a set up.