Closer Than Blood. Paul Grzegorzek

me only not quite as handsome.” This got a few chuckles.

      “Does it need to be an armed stop if we locate him?” Jane asked from her seat next to Phil.

      “No,” I replied. “Unless you see anyone in close proximity who might be following him. Or if you get solid intel or sight on the people looking for him. No approaches to any suspects are to be made until they’ve been risk assessed and signed off. Follow if you can, but the moment you get clocked you turn and run. Clear?” Everyone nodded. “Good. OK people, let’s get out there and find my arsehole of a brother before he gets himself killed.”

      The chatter of conversation returned as people went to their tasks. I waved my team into the Inspector’s office. He tended to go straight to the morning meeting when he got in, giving us a good couple of hours to use his office as we pleased.

      My usual team consisted of Phil Blunt, Jane Finchley, the ever-excitable Tom Shepherd and the Barry’s, Barry Mason and Barry Everett. If we had a big job on, like we had the day before, I ‘borrowed’ other officers from the unit, but this was my core team, my direct reports.

      “Morning all. What have we got?”

      “Simmonds has been released from custody,” Phil replied, leafing through a file he’d brought in with him. He was, I noticed, wearing knee length shorts that not only clashed with his check shirt, but were also a big no-no as far as the command team were concerned. You could look as scruffy as you liked in our particular corner of the job, but show your knees? That was asking for trouble. “We were holding him on money laundering, but we’ve had to bail him until we can prove the money is hooky.”

      “That’s for CID to worry about,” I said bluntly, “we’ve got bigger fish to fry now. Phil, you link in with Major Crimes, see if they got anything from the witnesses to the ambulance attack last night. I know we’re looking for Jake, not the gunmen, but too much intel never hurt anyone. And put some fucking jeans on, your legs are so white you’ll show out from a mile off.”

      He nodded with a grin as I turned to the next officer.

      “Tom, I want you out on the streets. Take Jake’s picture, and show it to anyone and everyone who might have seen him. Beggars, users, Big Issue sellers, I don’t care. Just find someone who’s seen him.”

      “Yes, Sarge,” Tom sighed.

      “Problem?” I asked before he could turn away. He hesitated, still young enough in service to be unsure whether or not to speak his mind, then shrugged.

      “I was just hoping to get in on the action,” he said, looking at me from underneath his eyebrows as if expecting me to bite. “This all seems a bit …”

      “Like proper intelligence work? Tom, it can’t all be Follows and car chases, mate. This is the real bread and butter of what we do, you know that. You want more adrenaline, go join LST,” I replied, more gently than I probably should have done. Tom was a nice lad, maybe too nice, despite his love of getting stuck in, and everyone but him knew he wasn’t really cut out for a career in intelligence. “Just get it done, yeah?”

      Tom nodded, face glum, then followed Phil out as I continued speaking.

      “Jane, I want you and Barry M to do house-to-house in the area where my car was recovered. See if anyone saw Jake when he dumped it. It’s a long shot, but it might turn something up.”

      “Will do,” Jane confirmed, standing. “I’ll get one of the analysts to run a search on ANPR and known privately-owned CCTV in the area too.”

      They filed out, leaving me with Barry Everett.

      “Where does that leave us?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his bald head to wick away the sweat that was already forming.

      “Trying to find out how Simmonds made contact with Jake in the first place. I’d ask Simmonds himself, but he won’t tell us shit.”

      Barry nodded, donning his trademark brown leather jacket despite the heat.

      We left the office, stopping only to grab our bags and a set of car keys. The bags contained what we referred to as our ‘fighting kit’; baton, spray and cuffs. Regulations stated that we should have them on us at all times while on duty, but I’ve never yet found a way to hide them effectively without tell-tale bulges all over the place. And that can be more dangerous in our little niche part of police work than being unarmed.

      “How’s your dad?” Barry asked as we headed down into the bowels of the station.

      “Dying,” I said, too harshly, then shook my head and softened my tone. “Sorry, that was rude, but he is. The docs gave him three months to live when he first got diagnosed, but here we are seven weeks later and they give him a week at the outside.”

      “You know no one would blame you if you took time off to be with him, right?” Barry’s voice was soft, echoing gently as we passed through the locker room and down the steps into the underground car park.

      “He would.” I barked a laugh. “He made me promise to find Jake and keep him safe.”

      “Oh.”

      “Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Keeping Jake safe is like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling. It’s impossible, and you get covered in shit if you try. Still, it makes a nice change to be pulled in the same direction by Dad’s wishes and the Chief Super. Not sure what I’d do if I’d been ordered off the case instead.”

      “Best not to think about it. Who’s driving?”

      “I am,” I said and hurried to the driver’s door. Barry was an excellent officer, but a good driver he was not.

      As my allocated vehicle was still on its way back from wherever Jake had left it, presumably via a forensics team, I’d taken the keys to one of the pool vehicles, a beaten-up old Vauxhall Corsa that had been ragged to hell and back.

      “So where first?” Barry asked as we pulled out of the car park and onto William Street, the engine sounding more like a Land Rover than a Corsa.

      “Whitehawk,” I replied, referring to the poverty-stricken council estate on the east edge of the city. “And you’d better keep your fighting kit handy, because this could get messy.”

       Chapter 12

      The Baker family were a legend in the City’s criminal underworld.

      They bred like rabbits, and out of the seven brothers that made up this generation’s crop, at least three were usually in prison at any one time.

      The family lived in five of the houses on Warbleton Place, a too-pleasant sounding name for the collection of tiny terraced homes that crowded both sides of the street. How the Bakers had convinced the council to let them congregate in one place I had no idea. You could spot their houses easily compared to the others; theirs were the ones with gardens full of discarded kitchen cabinets, old beds and other, less identifiable items.

      Between them they terrorised the rest of the street and few were brave enough to report them to the police. They had their own brand of justice in east Brighton, and it usually involved baseball bats and the occasional petrol bomb.

      More importantly, however, two of the Bakers – Eddie and Marcus – occasionally worked for Simmonds as muscle. They were the worst the family had to offer, happy to do absolutely anything, no questions asked, if the price was right.

      Eddie had been arrested for attempted murder no fewer than three times, but never charged with anything more than GBH, and Marcus had a string of weapons offences and assaults that would put a London gang to shame.

      We pulled up outside Eddie’s house, a tiny two-bedroom mid-terrace with a garden so covered in rubbish you could barely see the grass. In the few clear spaces, dog turds sat like brown landmines, waiting to go off should the unwary trespasser enter.

      “You