Текст книги "Good Bait"

Автор книги: John Harvey

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

45

They arrested Dennis Broderick at Heathrow: Broderick intent on catching a few rays at Sharm El Sheikh, ten days booked at the five-star Savoy Hotel on White Knight Beach, garden-view room at a special bargain price, all meals included. He was helping himself to an extra portion of hors d’oeuvres in the business-class lounge when Karen approached him, Ramsden at her shoulder, other officers at the doors – Warren Cormack back at headquarters, happy to leave the fieldwork to others and concentrate on the search for the missing Volvo.

When Karen put a hand on his forearm Broderick jerked back, spilling sour cherry sauce down the front of his lightweight linen suit, worn in anticipation of the Egyptian sun.

‘Dennis, whatever is it?’

Emphatically not Mrs Broderick, his companion was somewhere in her early thirties, peddling twenty-five. All those hours on the sunbed and a painful full Brazilian bikini wax about to go to waste.

The downward turn to her mouth was severe.

Ramsden cupped a hand beneath her elbow and ushered her to where a female officer was waiting.

Broderick did his best to stare Karen down, then, when that failed, began blustering: mistaken identity, false arrest. Only at the mention of his being marched out of there in handcuffs did he fall quiet.

‘I’m not saying another word,’ he said, ‘till I’ve contacted my lawyer.’

‘Good idea,’ Karen replied pleasantly and stood aside while two of the officers led him away.

Forensics had found quite copious traces of blood belonging to bothValentyn Horak and one of his henchmen in the building on Wing aerodrome. Checking out the Ford Transit, which was found, stripped of its number plates, at the rear of the D amp; J Foods storage area off the Al, proved more difficult. The assumption was that heavy plastic had been used as an inner liner, covering walls and floor, and set carefully in place before the bodies were transported; after which the interior was carefully washed out after the load was delivered. Not just washed, scrubbed within an inch of its life.

No prints, nary a one.

Painstaking work with Luminol did, however, finally reveal several minute traces of blood between the flange and panelling on the rear door. Sufficient to obtain a match: proof positive Horak’s body had been in the van.

It was agreed that Karen would begin questioning Broderick, Ramsden in attendance; Cormack would be watching via a video link in an adjoining room and able to speak to Karen through a small attachment, newsreader style, behind her ear.

Broderick’s lawyer was sandy haired, spectacled, off-the-peg suit, leather briefcase stuffed to the gills; the mints on his breath not quite strong enough to disguise the garlic in whatever he’d recently been eating.

The air in the room stale, yesterday’s air, the temperature a notch or two too high.

Broderick fidgeted with the lapels at the front of his suit jacket; stopped; started again. A quick look towards Karen, then down at the table. Scratches, pencil marks, daubs of Biro, veins of sweat that had sunk into the grain.

‘Tell us,’ Karen said, ‘about the van.’

‘Van?’

‘Ford Transit 350, diamond white, manual transmission. Registered, June 2007. Mileage, 51,302. Leased from Webster Garage and Autohire in Milton Keynes on behalf of D amp; J Foods. That van. Paperwork in your name. See?’

She swivelled a photocopy of the agreement round on the desk, counted a slow three, swivelled it back.

‘Your signature, agreed?’

‘Seems to be, yes.’

‘Seems?’

‘All right, yes. So what?’

‘You personally leased this van?’

‘Yes.’

‘For what purpose?’

For a moment, he blanked.

‘Simple question, why, when you did, did you lease the van?’

‘My client,’ the solicitor said, intervening, ‘runs a successful and expanding business which trades across the South-East of the country and up into East Anglia. As such, additions to the delivery fleet are a quite normal part of its operations.’

‘Absolutely,’ Karen said. ‘Very nicely put. But our interest is in one particular vehicle. The uses to which it might have been put.’

‘Uses?’ Broderick said. ‘Uses? You’ve just been told. Meeting orders, making deliveries, what do you think?You want to see the manifests, I can show you. Two hundred and fifty precooked meals to a primary school in Spalding. More of the same to a group of nursing homes in Saffron Walden. Vacuum-packed sausages and salamis to Londis stores right across Essex, from Chelmsford to the Thames fucking Estuary.’

Patches of bright colour stood out on his cheeks.

‘And these?’ Karen said, sliding the photographs from their folder. ‘You delivered these?’

Broderick looked, caught his breath, looked again.

‘Oh, Christ!’ he said softly, and angled his head away.

The solicitor leaned forward, then forward again, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing in four glossy 10 x 8s.

‘The bodies of three men,’ Karen said. ‘Systematically tortured, mutilated, finally killed. Murdered. Then transported in that van, your van, to a storage unit at Stansted airport. That’s the delivery we’re interested in.’

All trace of colour had gone from Broderick’s face.

‘I’d like a break.’

‘Later.’

‘Now. Please.’

‘My client,’ the solicitor said, ‘has just undergone a considerable shock-’

‘I’m sorry, we need to continue.’

‘Then I insist that my protest be documented-’

‘Five minutes,’ Cormack said in Karen’s ear. ‘Five minutes, ten. No harm.’

‘Very well,’ Karen said. ‘A short break, agreed.’

She didn’t like it, but she knew Cormack was right: the last thing they wanted, whatever Broderick might say rendered inadmissible by accusations of shock tactics, statements obtained under duress.

When Broderick sat across from her again, some ten minutes later, he seemed calmer, a degree more composed.

‘Have you any idea,’ Karen asked, ‘how your van-?’

‘Not my van.’

‘Your firm’s van, could have been used in the way I’ve described?’

‘If it was.’

‘It was.’

He looked as if he were about to argue the point, but, after a quick head shake from his solicitor, changed his mind. ‘None at all.’

‘After it was leased, the van was kept where?’

‘The Bedford depot.’

‘Off the Al?’

‘The Al, right.’

‘Not at Wing?’

‘No.’

‘You do have a storage unit there?’

‘Not any more.’

‘So the van …’

‘The van would have been based at Bedford, as I said.’

‘And how many people would have had access to it there? Yourself aside.’

‘Four? Five? Possibly more.’

‘How many more?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t say for sure.’

‘Run a tight ship,’ Ramsden observed.

‘The keys to all the vans are kept in the office,’ Broderick said. ‘Other than at night, they’re not locked away.’

‘So anyone could come along, just borrow one of your vehicles?’

‘In theory, yes.’

‘In practice?’

‘In practice there’s a daily schedule, someone there in the office, logging them in and out.’

‘Twenty-four hours?’

‘Um?’

‘Logging them out, twenty-four hours a day?’

‘Obviously not.’

‘You don’t keep a check on mileage?’

‘If one of the vehicles was getting a lot of extra use it would be noticed, yes, but otherwise, no.’

‘And do they get used?’ Ramsden asked. ‘Your employees, personal use. Outside normal hours. That happens? Running the kids to the football, stuff like that?’

‘Sometimes, yes.’

‘Use them sometimes yourself?’

‘Once in a while.’

‘Recently?’

‘Not recently.’

‘You sound very certain.’

‘I am.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I know, because apart from shifting it round the yard a couple of times, since we took delivery of that van, I doubt I’ve been behind the wheel.’

‘Well, somebody was.’

‘Yes, well. That’s sort of your problem then, isn’t it? Not mine. So if there’s nothing else …’

He glanced at his solicitor, who gave a small nod.

‘I do think,’ the solicitor said, ‘my client has helped you all he can.’

Broderick started to rise, push back his chair.

‘Ask him about Gordon Dooley,’ Cormack said in Karen’s ear.

‘Gordon Dooley,’ Karen said. ‘He’s a friend of yours?’

‘Gordon?’ Broderick hesitated, sat back down. ‘Yes, why?’

‘A good friend?’

‘Ye-es.’

‘Close.’

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘But you’ve known him a long time?’ Karen asked.

‘Since we were kids.’

‘At school together.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Since when you’ve kept in touch.’

‘Pretty much.’

‘And this friendship, how would you define it?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Social or what?’ Ramsden asked. ‘Drink down the pub, dinner a few times a year with the wives. Birthdays, stuff like that?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s right.’

‘And business?’

‘What business?’

‘That’s what we’re asking you.’

‘No, not really.’

‘Joint ventures?’

Broderick shook his head.

‘Not what we’ve heard.’

‘Heard? Who from?’

‘Your wife, for one.’

‘That bitch! All she knows is the price of Botox and which delivery boy’s worth a quick fuck.’

‘That’s as maybe.’ Karen said. ‘But according to her, you and Gordon Dooley had a business relationship in the past. Probably not the kind could be traced back through Companies House.’

‘Fuck off,’ Broderick said, but without conviction.

‘You know, of course, what your friend Dooley’s business is these days?’

Broderick affected to give it some thought. ‘Some kind of buying and selling? Scrap, he was into that for a while, I know. Stripping out old houses and flogging the proceeds.’ He shrugged. ‘That kind of thing, I suppose.’

‘Drugs,’ Karen said.

‘Do what?’

‘Cannabis, amphetamines, heroin, cocaine. Take your pick. About as many outlets across the country as you’ve got for your whatever it is, chorizo and corned beef.’

‘I wouldn’t know. Didn’t know.’

‘You disapprove?’

‘His business is his business.’

‘No matter what?’

‘Look,’ Broderick aimed a finger, ‘Gordon’s breaking the law, and I’m not saying he is, your affair, not mine.’

‘We’re in danger of losing it,’ Cormack said. ‘Get back to the van.’

‘Why you?’ Karen said.

‘What?’

‘Surely you’ve got people working for you who can do jobs like that? Why did you personally go and lease the van?’

‘God! Who knows? Most probably I was there, in the area, I don’t know.’

‘And you needed another van why?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Try.’

Broderick gave a theatrical sigh, assumed the face of the sorely put-upon. ‘Far as I recall, we had one van in for long-term repairs, another had broken down somewhere the day before. Hitchin, Hertford, Hatfield, one of those.’

‘And that’s why you leased the van?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not because Gordon Dooley asked you?’

‘Dooley? What the hell’s Dooley got to do with this?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

‘You sure that’s not why he phoned you three days running, up to and including the day the van was hired?’

‘I doubt Gordon’s phoned me three days running his whole life.’

‘Our records show otherwise.’

‘I trust,’ the solicitor said, ‘you haven’t been accessing my client’s phone records without a warrant?’

Karen smiled.

‘Or hacking into his mobile phone?’

‘Who d’you think we are?’ Ramsden grinned. ‘ News of the World?’

‘What I suggest,’ Karen said, ‘Dooley phoned you three days before you went out to Milton Keynes, wanting you to get hold of a van in such a way there would be no clear link back to himself. Could be you needed a little persuading.’

‘Bullshit,’ Broderick said. ‘Never happened. Absolute bloody fantasy.’

‘Conjecture,’ said his solicitor. ‘Fishing expedition, pure and simple. Only this time, no bait.’ He tapped Broderick on the shoulder. ‘We’re leaving.’

‘I’d like to put on record,’ Karen said, ‘our thanks to Mr Broderick for so wholeheartedly helping us with our inquiries.’

She managed to hold her smile till he’d left the room.

46

The Centre Hospitalier de Guingamp was on the rue de l’Armor, one of the principal roads winding north from the town centre. Kiley had spent enough time in hospitals to recognise the antiseptic smell, the mixture of frayed hope and resignation on patients’ faces, the hushed purposiveness of staff as they busied this way and that. He could remember the forced cheerfulness of the surgeon after the second, failed, operation on his leg. Find a more sedentary game after this, perhaps? Less in the way of physical contact. Ping-pong? Chess? Soccer for you henceforth, Jack, will beMatch of the Day, I’m afraid, Saturday nights. You and Gary Lineker. It twinged now, the leg, at the memory.

Cordon was in a side room at the end of the ward, a window looking out on to a phalanx of tall firs, their branches bright from the recent rain.

A drip had recently been detached, the stand still close alongside the bed. Bandages around the head, traversing the corner of one swollen eye, stitches threading their way across bruised skin.

The rest of his face was bloodless, pale.

In the way that people in hospital frequently did, he looked to have aged ten years at least.

‘Took your fucking time,’ Cordon said.

‘Few things to arrange. Came when I could.’

‘Good of you to bother.’

‘Call I got, made out you were at death’s door. ‘Stead of a few bumps and bruises. Couple of cracked ribs. Might not’ve hurried if I’d known.’

‘Bastards must’ve put the boot in when I was out.’

‘Lucky it was nothing worse.’

Cordon knew it to be true: he could have lost an eye; he could have been dead.

‘Want to tell me what happened?’ Kiley moved a book, sat on the side of the bed.

‘What’s to tell? Whoever it was got somehow into the house, a window at the back somewhere, I don’t know. Suckered me. Left me unconscious. When I came round, Letitia and Danny had gone. Car disabled, something with the carburetter, I don’t know, tyres fucked. After God knows how long I managed to crawl as far as the lane, rouse the old man. Must have passed out again after that. Woke up here. Tubes sticking out of me like some bloody porcupine. Someone from the local gendarmerie waiting at the end of the bed.’

‘How much d’you get away with telling them?’

‘Between my French and his English, not a great deal. Attempted burglary, that’s what I said. Woke and caught them in the act, got this for my troubles. Too dark, too quick to be able to give a description. Left it at that.’

‘You didn’t mention Letitia? The boy?’

Cordon shook his head.

‘How about Kosach? Anton?’

He shook his head again. Not a good idea. Winced at the pain.

‘Down to him though, you reckon?’

‘Difficult to see what else.’

‘And you think that’s where they are now? With him?’

‘Good bet, I’d say.’

‘He can’t just keep them prisoner.’

‘He can try.’

A nurse stepped into the space, hovered, went away. The low hum from the central heating continued, unabated. Outside, the rain had started up again, buffeting the windows.

‘When this happened,’ Kiley said, ‘there was no warning?’

‘No.’

‘I’m surprised they got the drop on you, all the same.’

‘Preoccupied,’ Cordon said. ‘A little preoccupied.’

Kiley read the look in Cordon’s good eye. Made the universal sign. ‘Thought it wasn’t like that between you?’

‘It’s not.’

‘What was this then? A one-off? Pair of you got carried away? Or just a little something to alleviate the boredom?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not to me. But it might make it tougher for her with Anton, if he knows she’s been screwing around.’

‘I wouldn’t exactly call it that. Besides, he knows she’s no angel. And Danny’s what he wants, not Letitia.’

‘In that case, why not just take the boy?’

‘Would have been difficult, bringing him out of France, back into the country on his own. All that much easier if Letitia agrees to play along.’

‘She’d do that?’

‘Pragmatic, that’s Letitia. Besides, I can’t see she’d’ve had a lot of choice.’

Kiley walked across to the window and looked out. The sky, shadings of deep purple and the occasional yellowish streak, was a similar colour to the skin round Cordon’s left eye.

‘You know,’ Kiley said, ‘I came to Brittany once when I was a kid. First time ever in France. Cycling holiday with the school. Some kind of exchange. First night a bunch of us shook off the teachers, went into town. First one cafe, then the next. One after another, pointing at the bottles behind the bar. Spending what little bit of money we had fast as we could. Sick, sick, sick as a dog. After that there was a curfew. Local police on duty to keep the stupid Anglaisfrom causing any more commotion, getting drunk. Couldn’t have been much more than sixteen stupid years old.’

He smiled. ‘Met my first girlfriend on that trip, too. Pen pal more or less till I left school.’

‘Thinking of looking her up?’ Cordon asked caustically.

‘I did once. What? Dozen years ago? On holiday with a couple of friends. She was still living in the same place, little village outside Vannes, out near the Atlantic coast. Mistake. Five kids, moustache, wide as a house.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘I don’t know. Things like that, they nag at you.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Oh, missed chances. Roads not taken. Relationships allowed to drift. Always that nagging question, what if, what if?’

‘French air, is it?’ Cordon asked. ‘Bringing out all this philosophy?’

‘I dare say.’

‘’Cause if it is, sooner you get back across the Channel the better it’ll be.’

‘Had a word with the doctor on the way in. Four or five days it’ll be before you’re discharged. That, at least.’

‘Nothing to say I can’t discharge myself,’ Cordon said. But, as he moved, some unspecified pain speared through him and he gasped loudly, hands gripping the sheets.

‘When I come back later,’ Kiley said, ‘I’ll bring grapes. A deck of cards. See if I can’t win some money off you while you’re disabled.’

47

The Volvo had been found in a scrap dealer’s yard outside Erith, close to the Thames Estuary at Crayford Ness. The same Volvo that had been stolen from the Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush – 4,500 parking spaces, valet parking available, a lot of cars from which to choose – and then shown up on CCTV, tailing the leased Transit en route to Stansted and back; now with its engine removed, doors and side panels disassembled, chassis ready to be winched away. Bits and pieces for the fingerprint boys to play with. Girls, too. The result: one right index finger on the steering column, with a partial alongside; another partial, left little finger, on the fascia. Palm print on the inside of the offside door.

Where would we be, Karen thought, without computers, AFIS, DNA?

Answer: even farther behind.

The prints taken from the body of the Volvo confirmed what the dealer had already told them: the identity of the individual who’d brought it in – Stuart Dyer, just twenty-one years old and recently arrested for possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply, but then released. Two previous charges of possession of a controlled substance, one dismissed, the other for which he’d served a little juvenile time. His co-defendant in both cases was his cousin, Jamie Parsons. Parsons, who did scut work for Gordon Dooley and, because of that association, was gunned down outside the Jazz Cafe in Camden, presumed victim of an attack for which the torture and eventual murder of Valentyn Horak and his henchmen was a reprisal.

Give it time and, eventually, gradually, it all tied together.

When Ramsden, with some serious back-up, called round at the tower-block flat in Foots Cray where he lived, Dyer was sitting with his mum watching daytime TV, an ad for stairlifts screening when Ramsden came into the room. Dyer with a can of Kestrel in his hand, his mum favouring cider, both of them smoking, some kind of bull-headed mastiff growling through its slobber at their feet.

Dyer made as if to bolt, but then, reading the glint in Ramsden’s eye, thought better of it.

‘What the fuck’re you after now?’ Mrs Dyer asked.’ ‘Why’n’t you leave the boy alone?’

Jeremy Kyle appeared on screen to loud applause, doubtless about to reveal some poignant personal dilemma to the audience. Lifting the remote from the corner of the settee, Ramsden muted the volume.

‘Hey! I was fuckin’ watching that!’

The dog growled lazily, then lowered its head.

‘Sorry, Mrs Dyer. Just wanted a word with young Stuart here.’

‘Yeah, well, s’posin’ he don’t want a word with you?’

‘What’s it to be, Stuart?’ Ramsden said. ‘You want to talk here or down the station?’

‘I got a choice?’

Ramsden grinned, showing crooked teeth.

‘Just wait, yeah,’ Dyer said, ‘while I get me fuckin’ coat.’

‘Take it easy on him, yeah?’ his mum said, once he was out of the room. ‘Lot of mouth, but he’s not very bright. Easy led, know what I mean?’

Taking back the remote, she raised the volume loud.

Dyer sat uneasily, rocking the chair back on its metal legs. Grey drawstring hoodie with A amp; FITCH in white lettering down the sleeve. Tangle of dark hair. Something of a pretty-boy face, save for a cluster of whiteheads sprouting around his mouth. Half-hidden beneath his lashes, grey-green eyes.

Ramsden had asked one of the officers to fetch a Dr Pepper from the vending machine and Dyer drummed on it haphazardly with his fingers, nails bitten down.

Feigned nonchalance.

If he wasn’t already squirming inside, he was really as stupid as his mum had made out.

‘The Volvo,’ Ramsden said, ‘let’s start there.’

Nothing.

‘Come on, Stuart, don’t piss me about. The one you dumped in Erith. Snagged it from Westfield, remember? Volvo, S60, dark green. Asked for it special, did he, Arthurs? Dougie Freeman, maybe. Whoever it was, brought you in as driver. Get us a nice motor, Stuey, something with a bit of speed, comfortable. Volvo’d be handsome.’

‘Dunno what you’re talkin’ about.’

‘Come on, Stuart. Your prints are all fucking over it and, if that weren’t enough, we’ve got you barellin’ down the road to Stansted on CCTV.’

‘Bullshit!’

‘You think so?’

Dyer took a swallow from the Dr Pepper, bought a little time. Cleared his throat.

‘Just say. Just say, mind – and I’m not admitting anythin’, right, but, like I say, just s’posin’ I took the motor, right, like you said, all that’d be, takin’ and drivin’ away. No one’s gonna send me down for that. Lose my licence, maybe, six months, a year. Small fine, time to pay. Pro-fuckin’-bation.’

‘Stuart, Stuart, you’re not listening. The minute you got behind that wheel, that journey out to Stansted, you were getting into something a lot more serious. More serious than you believe. Accessory, Stuart, that’s you. Accessory to torture. Better than that, murder.’ Ramsden shook his head. ‘You done it this time, boy, and no mistake.’

The colour had blanched from Dyer’s cheeks and there was a pronounced twitch in one of his grey-green eyes.

‘You want to take a look, Stuart? Take a look at these?’

With exaggerated care, Ramsden fanned out half a dozen photographs taken inside the storage unit, three bodies, like so much casual slaughter, hanging down.

‘Pretty, don’t you think?’

Dyer bit into his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

‘Of course,’ Ramsden said, a change of voice, change of tone, ‘I can understand why you’d have wanted to be involved. Jamie Parsons, him as was gunned down in Camden, he was your cousin, yeah?’

Dyer nodded.

‘Any kind of payback, only right you’d want to be involved. Family, yeah? Your mum’d have told you, I’m sure. Got to stand up, Stu. Be counted on this. But I bet she never, you never, thought it would come to this …’ Tapping the photographs. ‘Am I right, Stuart? Am I right? You never …’

There was panic now, bright and darting, in his eyes. The kind you see in rats, Ramsden thought, trapped up against the wire.

Slowly, he leaned in, not enough to frighten, just enough to reassure. ‘What we need to talk about, Stuart, is how you got yourself mixed up in all this. See if there isn’t something we can do. Some way round this, don’t leave you in the dock along with everyone else. Culpable homicide, Stuart, three times over. Life inside. You don’t want that.’ Reaching across, Ramsden patted his hand. ‘Okay, Stuart? Okay? Let’s see what we can do.’

‘This is all on tape?’ Karen said. ‘Transcribed?’

Ramsden grinned his crooked grin. ‘Even as we speak.’

They were in her office, evening, late, but no one was going home. Sandwiches, half-eaten; coffees, growing cold. Through the blur of half-glass, other officers moved around as if underwater, sat hunched over their desks, computers, accessed this list and that, pressed keys, made calls.

‘He’s named everyone?’

‘Everyone in the car, the van. Everyone involved.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Les Arthurs, Kevin Martin, Jason Richards riding with Dyer in the Volvo, Dougie Freeman and Mike Carter up ahead in the van.’

‘Just Kevin Martin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not Terry?’

Ramsden shook his head.

‘Shame,’ Karen said.

‘Yes. No Dooley, either. Too careful to get his hands dirty, this kind of business. Just a name, where Dyer’s concerned. Barely that.’

‘Who was it, then, set him up?’

‘Arthurs, apparently. Told him there was going to be some serious payback for what had happened to his cousin, Jamie. Give them a good working over, that’s what Dyer reckoned. What went on out at Wing, he didn’t know about. Not till after.’

‘Even though he was there?’

‘Sent him off for pizza, didn’t they? His story. Twenty-mile round trip in search of fifteen-inch pepperoni pizzas. Maybe when this is over he’ll get a job with Domino’s.’

‘You believe all that? Believe him or d’you think he’s just stringing us along?’

Ramsden shrugged. ‘I’d say, bit of both. But right now, it suits us to take what he’s saying as gospel. Long as it keeps him talking. And, besides, what he’s given us so far, Carter and Arthurs doing most of the heavy stuff, fits in pretty well with what we might have guessed. Nasty bastards, both of them. Sooner they’re off the streets the better.’

Karen nodded. ‘I’ve had one conversation with Burcher already. Due another one tomorrow.’

‘No plans for lifting Arthurs and the others till then?’

Karen shook her head. ‘Watching brief only. Till we’re told otherwise. My guess, they’ll want to wait till they’re sure everything’s in place, make one fell swoop.’

‘Just so long as they don’t hold off too long, let ‘em slip away. And make sure they remember who got ‘em this far. Don’t let the bastards grab all the glory.’

A rueful smile came to Karen’s face. ‘Trust me on that one, Mike. Trust me.’