Rock And A Hard Place

Maggie finds herself in dangerous territor y when an ageing getaway driver asks her to take on a crime family

Maggie Maddison, private investigator, leaned across the table in the visitation room at Winchester Prison where she was sitting with Alasdair “Ali” Donan. She’d gone there to get help for another client and that assistance had been given, but not without a price. She’d agreed to help Ali in a case of his own and was about to find out exactly what that would entail.

Ali kept his voice low, eyes down.

“You can’t make any notes,” he whispered. “I’ll only warn you once.

These are bad people.”

Maggie’s heart sank. Ali wasn’t like her usual clients. For a former district nurse from Hampshire, this was sounding terribly disturbing. A renowned getaway driver, Ali was a perfectly charming Scot when you were on the right side of him, but he no doubt had a darker side.

“I hear you,” she said.

“I’ll tell you what you need to know, then we’re going to have a very loud row.” “But why would we…”

“Because the men who want me to drive for them have eyes everywhere, including prison guards. I don’t want them getting the wrong idea about your visit.” “All right,” Maggie said.

“There’s a crime family headed by Ossie Crowdus, operating in the south London area. He’s more often known as Pliers, for reasons I won’t explain.”

He didn’t have to, Maggie thought. Her imagination was working overtime.

“I’m getting out of here in two weeks. Pliers sent me a message. He wants me to do a job with him and his boys in a month’s time. A robbery at a hotel where a foreign royal family’s going to be staying. Tons of jewellery, clothes, cash - they’re known to travel loaded. They’ve got their own security with them as well as British police on standby. The lads I’m driving for will be heavily armed, ready for anything.” “And you don’t want to do it?”

“I’m sixty this year, darlin’. Done enough time to know when to stop. I want to sit on a beach, drink Sangria and stop looking over my shoulder. I’ve spent more time with my lawyers than my wife in the last decade. So no, I don’t want to do this.”

“I appreciate what happens to a snitch in jail, but surely we could alert the police anonymously, get the robbery stopped before it happens,” Maggie suggested.

“They’d know. This is a family set up. Plus, they took out some insurance. The message about the job came with photos of all eight of my grandchildren. Some in their uniforms going into school, two being dropped off at their childminder, one still a babe in my daughter’s arms. You don’t say no to these people, and you certainly don’t get the police involved.”

Maggie rubbed her eyes. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this before.”

“Which is why they won’t expect you. Please, Maggie. You’ve got guts. You came here to me, unafraid, to ask for my help with another case. You’re clever and you know right from wrong. I know I’ve messed up in the past but I want to climb out of that pit. Find something, anything, that I can do to get out of it. We’ve been talking too long.”

He pushed his chair back dramatically. “What are you…?” Maggie said.

“You can go to hell!” he shouted. “Don’t come in here with your judgments and your lectures, looking down your nose at me, lady.”

Maggie took a deep breath and got to her own feet.

“You”re not a big shot any more.” She raised her own voice in reply. “You’re a washed-up criminal who’s no good at his job. You realise the successful ones are living on the other side of these walls?”

“Don’t you ever come here again!” he hissed at her. “Not if you know what’s good for you.” He gave his chair a kick for good measure and stormed off.

Maggie watched him leave before lifting her chin and disappearing through the opposite door to go back through security and head home. By the time she reached her own front door, the reality of what she’d taken on had hit her. This was not going to be easy… and there were lives riding on her success or failure. Including, potentially, her own.

For a week Maggie researched the Crowdus family online. Ali hadn’t been exaggerating. Ossie and his five children had their fingers in lots of different pies and had been convicted for

most of them at one time or another.

Between them there were press reports of Crown Court trials for forgery, kidnapping, violence, theft, handling stolen goods and benefit fraud. Some had resulted in convictions, most in acquittals, at least two had led on to further charges of witness intimidation. Maggie had intermittently picked the case up only to put it down again, worrying constantly until Lance Ryan turned up at her door unexpectedly and insisted that she explain what was going on.

“Come on, Maggie,” he said, his usually smiling face drawn into a frown. “We’ve been going out a long while now and I’ve never seen you like this. Tell me what’s bothering you or I’ll start thinking it’s me.”

She thought about the weight she was carrying and decided to explain all, omitting only the names of those involved.

“Cup of tea,” Lance said. “We’ll even crack open a packet of biscuits. No one ever solved a problem with a dry throat.”

“You do talk nonsense,” Maggie said, kissing him on the cheek.

“Maybe I do, but that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile this week, so I’ll not apologise for it.”

They talked through the problem. Maggie shared what she could of her research and Lance sent her off to get a hot bath and clear her mind before they spent the evening talking possible ways forward. By the time she reappeared in pyjamas, hair wrapped in a towel, Lance was scowling into the fireplace.

“You OK?” she asked.

“Not really. I did something you’re going to be cross about. I’m glad I did it, but we’re going to have a conversation you’re not going to like at all.”

Maggie poured herself a glass of wine and sat down.

“Let’s get it over with,” she said.

“While you were in the bath, I used your laptop and went through your search history to find out exactly who the people are you’re so scared of.”

“You did what!” Maggie shouted, standing up. “Lance, I have a duty of confidentiality. You had no right. You knew I’d deliberately kept that private…”

“This isn’t a game. These people are incredibly dangerous. Do you have any idea what they’ll do if they find out you’re involved?”

“That’s not the point. I have to be able to trust you.”

“Maggie Maddison,” he said, walking forwards, pulling her hands off her hips and holding them in his own. “I’m in love with you. What sort of man would I be if I didn’t want to keep my future wife safe?” She stared at him.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“I said, my future wife. And I meant it. I appreciate that the middle of an argument about dangerous criminals was perhaps not the right time to propose, but…”

“You know you only get to do that once – win an argument by asking me to marry you. It’s a one-shot deal.” She smiled in spite of her fear and frustration. How utterly typical of Lance to sweep her off her feet with no notice and not so much of a hint as to how he’d been feeling.

“You don’t have to answer straight away,” he said. “For what it’s worth, me breaching your trust and going through the computer files has given me an idea. Tomorrow, we’re taking a trip.”

“For what it’s worth, me breaching your trust has given me an idea”

They sat in Lance’s car outside an enormous grey concrete hospital and watched the front door.

“You’re sure you’ll recognise them?” Lance asked.

Maggie waved a selection of photos of the family that she’d printed out.

“There were plenty of images of

Ossie’s grandson on the Please-Fund-This website page, and I’ve seen other photos of Ossie’s daughter. Their news updates section says the next appointment is

this morning. They didn’t put their surname on the funding page, but when you name your child Cockney Tyson it’s an easy trace. We’ll see them.”

“Poor kid. It doesn’t matter what his grandfather’s guilty of. No child should face a life-threatening illness. Are you sure Ali’s good for the money you’re offering them? I mean, saying he’s got the money is one thing but making sure he pays…”

“Ali’s whole family is under threat. This only works if he plays it straight and he knows it. There they are! Let’s go.”

Maggie and Lance, a teddy bear and Get Well Soon balloon in their hands, raced out of their car to follow Ossie with his wife, their daughter and her young son into hospital. Paediatrics was on the fourth floor. They let the Crowdus family take the lift and headed for the stairs.

“What I don’t understand, if they’re such a successful crime family, is why they don’t have the cash to pay for the little boy’s treatment themselves,” Lance said.

“My guess is that if they suddenly paid a fortune for private treatment in Italy, the Inland Revenue might have questions about why the cash hadn’t been declared on tax returns. Lesson learned from Al Capone,” Maggie said.

“What will you say to them?”

“Something along the lines of, we’ve seen the funding request page and an anonymous donor would like to pay for his treatment to give the boy a chance to survive this. We’ll arrange the payment then I’ll post a comment on the website ‘accidentally’ naming Ali so Ossie and his family know who their saviour is. Fingers crossed Ali will then get out of doing the job, especially if the reason Ossie organised the robbery was to fund this new treatment.”

They held hands, did their best to look like concerned relatives, and took a slow walk through paediatrics. No sign of the Crowdus clan. Retracing their steps, they spotted Ossie and his wife in the Ear, Nose and Throat waiting area.

“I wish Ossie weren’t here,” Maggie said. “But in for a penny…”

They wandered in and took a seat, waiting for little Cockney Tyson to reappear so they could claim to recognise him from the website and make their payment offer. Fifteen nail-biting minutes later a door opened and a doctor brought the child back out, mother in tow.

“Surgery next week and you’ll be right as rain,” the doctor said, giving the boy a beaming smile. “Shouldn’t be any lasting effects at all. Probably be allowed to go home the same day.”

Maggie looked at Lance who frowned into the magazine he was pretending to read. She put a hand on his arm and kept him in his chair as the family left.

“Create a distraction. I need the doctor focused on you,” she whispered, getting up to look at a notice board.

Lance began wiping his forehead and groaning, followed by a dramatic swaying.

A nurse asked if he needed assistance, which was when he summoned his finest acting skills and pretended to faint. “Doctor!” the nurse called.

The doctor raced out of her room and knelt at Lance’s side. Maggie slipped into the patient examination room and flipped open the top file, running down the page of notes until she found what she wanted.

Cockney Tyson Crowdus was scheduled for surgery on his left ear the following Monday to treat cholesteatoma following repeated ear infections. She closed the file and walked back out to find Lance explaining that low blood pressure occasionally caused him dizzy spells. He followed her to the nurses’ station. “That poor boy,” Maggie said to a nurse. “The one who just left. His family having to raise all that money to get treatment in Italy.”

“Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the nurse replied.

“I’m sure it’s him,” Maggie said, taking out her phone and bringing up the Please-Fund-This page. “There you go.” She showed it to the nurse and made sure her colleagues saw it too. “This explains all about his life-threatening illness.” The nurses shared angry glances but were too professional to comment. “Amazing, isn’t it, that families have the opportunity to raise money online like this? All those good people out there sending in however much they can spare. Ready to go?” she asked Lance. He nodded.

“So?” Lance asked in the lift. “A Crowdus family speciality. Fraud. Young Cockney has a disease which is nasty and requires surgery, but it’ll be fully resolved after his op next week. It’s nothing like as bad as they’ve made out online. He definitely doesn’t need any money for the fictional treatment in Italy. The NHS is paying the bill.”

“And you’ve ensured the nurses will be sufficiently outraged that someone will contact the authorities. You are clever.”

“My client keeps his money. Ossie Crowdus will be arrested – he won’t let his daughter take responsibility for this, so no doubt his lawyer will negotiate a plea deal. It’ll be a custodial sentence, with such a breach of public trust. He won’t be around for the robbery they’ve got planned.”

“So, your client’s off the hook as the getaway driver, and the public will get their contributions back,” Lance said. “So will you have time to think about that question I asked you now?”

“I will,” Maggie said.

“Good, because I’m not sure how much longer I can wait.”

“You weren’t listening,” Maggie said. “I just told you… I will!”

He picked her up, kissed her and carried her to the front doors.

“Maggie Maddison,” he promised. “You won’t regret this.”

“Quick wedding, no fuss. And I don’t want to wait. If this case has taught me nothing else, it’s that life is too precious to waste a single second of it.”

The doctor raced to Lance’s side. Maggie slipped into the room

NEXT MONTH More exciting action and adventure with our sleuth Maggie Maddison.