I shook my head in disgust and headed back into the office, throwing myself into my chair hard enough that it almost tipped over.
Sally turned to look at me, sympathy written all over her face. ‘Are you okay, Gareth?’ she asked, and for once I had no wish to drown in her eyes.
‘Not really. Someone screwed around with the evidence, I’m stuck in front of this damn desk for God knows how long, and Davey is probably in a bar somewhere drinking champagne and laughing at us right now.’ I tried hard not to sound like a whining teenager but I could hear it in my voice.
‘Has anyone told Jimmy yet?’ she asked as she turned back to her computer.
‘I hope not. I’ll grab a car and go and tell him. I’m sure they won’t mind me going up to the hospital.’
I jumped out of my chair, glad to be getting out of the office. Kev threw me a set of keys when I checked in with him, and within ten minutes I was walking into the ward at the Royal Sussex, where Jimmy was being looked after.
His little curtained off cubicle was awash with flowers, grapes and books of crossword puzzles, all sent by concerned colleagues and friends, and somehow they made Jimmy himself look smaller, as if he were shrinking under the weight of the gifts. His usually tanned complexion was pale and he had lost a good stone and a half since he had been in hospital. Where once he was all gym muscle and sense of humour, he was pale and skinny, a shadow of his former robust self.
‘How’s the knife magnet?’ I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed near his feet.
‘Almost ready to go home apparently,’ he said listlessly, not bothering to put on a brave face; we know each other too well. ‘How did the court case go?’ A hint of hunger entered his voice as he asked, a need for closure on what was probably the worst experience of his life.
I couldn’t meet his eyes as I explained the whole debacle, but I could still see his face drop as he realized that any hope of that closure was gone forever. Even with our statements and Davey being at the scene, the loss of evidence effectively stopped us from ever prosecuting him for what he did to Jimmy.
‘Any chance you can pop round to his house and cut his balls off?’ Jimmy asked, sensing my distress and trying to make me smile. That’s typical of Jimmy. He’s always the one to bring people out of bad moods with a joke or some idiot act that makes everyone laugh. On the morning that my marriage had finally fallen apart, he had strapped one of our removable blue lights to the top of his helmet and walked into a briefing for a murder inquiry. I laughed so much that I nearly choked and he got stuck on for inappropriate behaviour, but it had helped and I’d been pulled out of the depressive mood I’d been in.
I smiled at him and picked a grape off its stem, throwing it at his face with pinpoint accuracy. ‘Don’t be a knob. I wish I could, but they’d know it was me and then I’d be in a cell next to one of his friends, I have no doubt.’
He nodded and lay back, rubbing at the cannula embedded in the back of his left hand. ‘It’s a shame we can’t destroy his business then. Can you imagine what would happen if he started having trouble with his suppliers? They’d do the job for us!’
I started to laugh, then stopped as the idea ran through my mind, gathering speed as it went. We had details of his whole operation: who was working for him, where they dealt, who bought from them. In fact, there was so much information that we simply couldn’t deal with it all and we left many of his dealers in place purely so that we knew who to watch.
If someone were to use that information to make life difficult for Davey, it might indeed have the effect Jimmy had just mentioned. Suppliers were notoriously hard on people who had difficulty paying, so maybe it was time to get a little old school and let them solve our problem for us.
As usual Jimmy knew what I was thinking before I did and he threw me a warning look. ‘Don’t even think about it, fella. If you start screwing around using police intelligence, they’ll fucking crucify you. And besides, he’s not worth it. His time will come.’
I nodded distractedly, still thinking about how best to get hold of the information without it being traced back to me. All the Sussex computer systems have a keystroke program built in so that they can trace who is doing what and when. The only way around it is to find someone who hasn’t shut their computer down and use it, while making sure that you haven’t used your swipe card to get into that office, effectively making you invisible to the system.
‘Oi, Muppet!’ Jimmy’s call made me look up and realize that I had been staring into space. ‘If you even think about doing anything like that, I’m gonna smack you in the face. Just as soon as I can get out of bed, that is.’
I looked at him with my best innocent smile. ‘Who, me? Wouldn’t dream of it, mate. I’m in enough trouble as it is, what with the knife going walkies. It’s typical of Davey that he couldn’t make the knife just disappear, he had to make us look extra stupid in court, the bastard. Rubber knife my arse. You know we’re never going to live this down, don’t you?’
He nodded, tiring fast from the effort of conversation.
‘There’s no point getting so worked up over it, he’s just one of a hundred dealers in the city. I mean, I know he stabbed me and I’d love to see him swing for it, but his time will come, you know it will. And he didn’t stab me because of me, if you know what I mean, it was just because I was stopping him from getting away. It could have been any one of us, and I just haven’t got the energy to take it personally. Neither should you.’
I nodded, struggling to put what I was feeling into words.
‘It just seems to me that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, they keep getting away with it. Drugs took my brother away from me; they nearly took you away from me; and I don’t intend to keep watching it happen with my hands shoved in my pockets.’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘Easy mate. You can’t go taking out all your crap on people like Davey or you’ll end up doing something stupid, and then you’ll be for it.’
‘We’ll just have to agree to disagree there, but don’t worry, I promise I won’t go doing anything stupid. Not too stupid, anyway.’ I gave him my best winning smile, and he did his best to match it before glancing around hopefully as if he had just remembered something.
‘Look fella, you’d better chip off. I’m getting a sponge bath in a minute and I’m hoping it’s gonna be that fit Filipino nurse that’s around somewhere!’
I rose, being careful not to jostle him too much. ‘All right, mate, well you take care. I’ll let you know if anything comes up, okay?’
He nodded and waved, as I walked out through the ward, pausing next to a hugely overweight male nurse who barely squeezed into his blue uniform. As I got close, I could smell his sweat, strong enough to make me want to gag.
‘Uh, excuse me, mate, the chap in bed four is expecting a sponge bath. You couldn’t pop over and do it for him, could you? He was injured in the line of duty.’
I flashed the nurse my badge and he smiled and nodded as I left the ward, wishing I could see the look on Jimmy’s face when bath time came.
The trip back to the office should have taken me only a few minutes but I drove out and over the back of Whitehawk instead, needing to clear my head. I couldn’t shake the idea Jimmy had given me about ruining Davey’s empire, and I wanted either to be rid of it or to have a plan by the time I got back. I was mindful of my promise to not do anything stupid, but I couldn’t help but wonder if a few friendly warnings would make things a little warmer for Davey and let him know that we weren’t ready to give up.
I was just driving down Elm Grove towards The Level when my radio blurted an assistance