Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  Dougie continued: ‘Surmise: this is Gogarty’s way of getting us - i.e. me - to make twats of ourselves by digging up the garden of some perfectly innocent albeit sexually disconsolate meat-carving member of the public.’

  ‘I’ve already authorised the dig,’ said Cat, anxiously.

  ‘Then dig the garden, for pete’s sake. We can’t take any risks with this, no matter who we fuck off. But –’

  ‘I don’t want to piss on your parade but the suspect did actually confess, guv,’ interrupted Gina, angrily. ‘In, if you recall, vivid and harrowing and extremely distressing detail.’

  ‘He did,’ Dougie conceded. ‘I’m aware of that. I was actually there, you know, conducting my own interview. But thank you for –’

  ‘He knew details about the murders that weren’t released to the press! He knew that Sarah Penhall committed suicide, we held that back.’ She jutted out her chin. Her ‘you lose, wanker’ gesture.

  ‘And who else has that information?’ Dougie asked, giving ground a little.

  ‘No one. As yet. We do, and that’s all. The people around this table. And, you know –’ Gina glared around at the team, her team, who were closer to her than her own family, especially since her own family were all thieving cunts: ‘ - let’s face it, we are pretty discreet.’

  ‘And where precisely do we store that information, that we’re so exceedingly discreet about?’ Dougie asked with vicious courtesy.

  ‘Well –’ said Gina.

  ‘Well?’ taunted Dougie.

  ‘We store it in the case files.’

  ‘The case files?’

  ‘The case files.’

  ‘And where are the case files?’

  Gina sighed: in too deep now.

  ‘On the computer,’ she admitted. ‘On HOLMES. On the Met database program. But not hackable! I’d swear to that. We have security systems that –’

  ‘And, pray remind me, how precisely did our Love Chain Killer find and kidnap Julia Penhall?’

  Gina conceded it. Her jaw no longer jutted. ‘From us. Or rather, from the police database where the safe houses are all recorded. So maybe, well. It’s certainly the case that the safe house info was obtained either by remotely accessing secure files, OR by bribing a serving officer to make illegal copies. But more likely, um -’ Very quietly now. ‘- he’s hacked us.’

  ‘It was that skinny PC who gave us the lead on the safe house hacking fiasco, wasn’t it?’ Dougie mused. ‘The dorky one.’

  ‘Tom Derry.’

  ‘That’s the lad.’

  ‘Guv, logical non sequitur,’ Alliea pointed out. ‘Following your logic, the only way Gogarty could or would have hacked our files is if he is Gogarty; i.e. if he’s the serial killer who’s been hacking our files. In which case, circular logic gone mad, so what’s your problem?’

  ‘Point well made,’ said Catriona.

  ‘I refute that,’ said Dougie. ‘We don’t yet know that the hacker is the same as the killer. Maybe the hacker sells to the killer. Which means, maybe Gogarty is the hacker, but the killer is his best mate. Or an internet porn client. The nub of it is, and this is not a minor distinction: is Gogarty the cold-blooded murderer we’ve been hunting for all this time? Or is he just a bald evil computer-savvy fucker?’

  ‘He confessed!’ protested Gina once again, angrier than ever.

  Dougie got up and paced around the room. All eyes followed him as he went to, and fro. This often took a while.

  Dougie made brief involuntary faces as he walked, surface tokens of his thoughts working overtime.

  ‘Fair’s fair, mun,’ said Taff, ‘we’ve all watched the interview footage, we do actually know he’s not innocent.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ Dougie challenged.

  ‘Because I saw him,’ said Taff. ‘On the screen. And I smelled him too, in the flesh, when he was being booked in. And okay I have no sense of smell, but you know what I mean. You can feel it sometimes. Evil. And I felt it. Pure fucking evil that man. And I should, you know, know.’ Taff’s oft-broken nose was scarlet; his burst capillaries were bright with emotion.

  ‘Fact: I agree with you,’ said Dougie. ‘I know this about Gogarty too. I share your intuition. I’d wager both my testicles and my childhood Subbuteo set that he’s guilty as fuck of the crimes he’s just confessed to. So why do I feel this motherfucker has a Get Out Of Jail Free card?’

  Dougie was silent. For nearly four minutes. No one spoke, apart from the murmur of the three detectives who were still interrogating the cruise lines.

  Eventually Ronnie looked up from his e-berry and broke the silence. ‘I have it. Gilbert Maybury, fifty-three years old, is currently on a round the world cruise on the Star Lines and the ship is due into Tobago in two days.’

  ‘Is he confirmed as being aboard the ship?’ Dougie asked.

  ‘I spoke to the ship’s captain. He’s there. He’s on board. He won the ship’s quiz.’

  ‘Show me the photo again.’

  Catriona typed, and the holo appeared on the Crime Wall. Maybury: bald, heavily set, with staring eyes.

  ‘Now Gogarty.’

  Catriona typed, and a holo of Gogarty himself appeared beside Maybury.

  They all looked closer.

  ‘It’s not him. It’s not Gogarty,’ Dougie concluded. ‘Gogarty picked a lookalike.’

  ‘So that’s it,’ said Taff.

  ‘There are no bodies in the garden,’ said Gina.

  ‘Or in the house,’ said Catriona.

  ‘Wild goose chase,’ said Seamus Malone.

  ‘But the fat ugly sneaky bastard confessed!’ insisted Gina. ‘That’s got to be worth something! Or am I mad?’

  ‘A) – not necessarily. B) - almost certainly,’ said Dougie. ‘Move on, woman. Focus on, What do we know about Gogarty? Hmm? Really know I mean, not “think we know but haven’t really got a fucking clue” know?’

  Catriona typed and the data began to appear on their desk tablets. ‘Not much,’ she said. ‘We don’t know his date of birth, or his place of birth. He gives seven different birth months on seven different social networking sites. His father is – um. We can’t track his father. Or his mother. His brothers – he claims his brother died in a car crash in an email dated August 2019 but we have no match for that. Somerset House confirms – yeah - Gogarty is almost certainly an assumed identity. A good one but it doesn’t really hold up to a full forensic cyber search. Gogarty isn’t Maybury but he also isn’t Gogarty. He’s the master of the alias.’

  ‘Have we done a CRO check of his fingerprints?’ Dougie asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Catriona was affronted.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Not sure,’ said Catriona, flustered.

  ‘You authorised the check, but haven’t eyeballed it?’

  ‘No, guv. That’s not my job, I just write the Actions.’

  ‘Fair point. Shai?’

  ‘Not yet, guv.’ Shai was sheepish; Receiving was his job.

  Dougie sighed.

  ‘Do it.’

  Catriona typed. The CRO check appeared on their tablet screens.

  Six names were highlighted and enlarged. Six photographs swelled and grew. Six identities were confirmed.

  ‘He’s been to jail, as Darius Howard,’ said Catriona.

  ‘He’s been cautioned for violent affray as Ronnie Rogers,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘Owen Jones, GBH, three different counts.’

  ‘Thomas Peters, shoplifting.’

  ‘Mitchell Walker, perverting the course of justice, numerous counts.’

  ‘Graham Ward, caution for affray.’

  ‘Vladimir Pyotr, drunk and disorderly.’

  ‘Six criminal records, under six different identities!’ Alliea marvelled.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Dougie, reading the wall of words fast. ‘Number four. Mitchell Walker. Arrested eleven times, charged with perverting the course of justice on each occasion. Never did time, but in his summing up of Walker’s last case,
the judge described him as “A foolish delusional man who will get himself into serious trouble one day.” Find out more, Cat.’

  Catriona typed and the subheadings expanded. Shai read it out loud:

  ‘This is the first case, guv. Mitchell confessed to the murder and rape of a twelve year old girl in Lancaster in January 2012. Detectives extended his detention twice and he was then remanded for trial. But charges were later dropped and a local man was charged and is still doing time.’

  Alliea took over the reading of the next entry. ‘Two years later, Mitchell confessed to the murder of a prostitute in Glasgow, March 2010. Charges were dropped when another prostitute confirmed Mitchell was having sex with her at the time of the killing.’

  Murmurs around the table followed.

  Fillide, red-gowned, arms bare, throat embraced by a golden necklace, hair artfully coiffured, was silent throughout all this. She listened intently to the verbal summaries, but was unable to make any sense of the walls of words that floated in the air and on her desk tablet. Her views were not sought nor did she offer them.

  Dougie himself read the third entry on the Holo Wall: ‘January 2012, Mitchell confessed to the brutal murder of an eighty-one year old Chinese woman Li Khong, known to her friends and family as “Mother Li”. Mother Li was sitting in a chair in the back garden of her daughter’s house asleep, on the occasion of her granddaughter’s eighth birthday party. A sniper with an airgun shot her in the eye and she never woke up. Mitchell Walker was a near neighbour of the family who had made racist threats against the mother, the father, the children and the grandmother. Charges were later dropped when fingerprints were found on the murder weapon that did not match Mitchell’s. On this occasion, he was sent to trial for perverting the course of justice and would have got done for it, had he not run into a gullible jury who thought he was a sad victim not a slimeball who deserved, well, let’s not go there.’ Dougie took a breath. ‘Long and short of it: the bastard we just charged is a bloody fantasist.’

  ‘No, he’s not!’ protested Gina.

  ‘He’s the one, guv. The real fucking thing,’ said Shai.

  ‘You’re not following me, people. He’s prepared his ground. He’s established his defence long in advance of ever being arrested,’ Dougie said. ‘Gogarty – let’s call him that – can prove he’s been living under a false identity. And he can also show that under his real identity he has a history of giving false confessions to murders and other serious crimes. Making his entire confession to me invalid and void and all in all, not worth the paper I wipe my slippery arse upon.’

  Gina was still digging in: ‘Then how did he know so much about the Love Chain killings?’

  ‘Because he’s the fucking killer!’ That was Taff.

  ‘I know he’s the –’

  ‘She knows you know he’s the –’

  ‘ – fucking –’

  ‘ – fucking killer –’

  ‘ – killer –’

  ‘ – that’s not her point, her point is –’

  ‘Can I make my point, guv?’ said Gina, shirtily.

  ‘Jesus! Gob it out then.’

  ‘My point,’ said Gina, ‘is, granted he’s guilty but is pretending to be innocent, how does he account for knowing so much about the Love Chain murders?’

  ‘He’ll have a reason. It’ll be a doozey. Fuck,’ said Dougie.

  Dougie’s entire large and muscular body was a study in trapped rage.

  ‘Let me get this,’ said Taff. ‘He lets himself get captured, right? Then gives a false confession, knowing he’s got form for false confessions, then walks away laughing?’

  Dougie nodded, brutally. ‘It’s the mindset,’ he said. ‘The psychopathic mindset. This is all a great big joke to him.’

  ‘Okay then, so we let him go,’ said Gina. ‘And mark his card. Tap his phone. Cookie his computer. Make sure he never gets the chance to kill again. It’s what MI5 do all the time, with terror suspects. We get up his chuff and stay there, till he dies.’

  ‘Not good enough,’ said Dougie.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘It’s all true,’ said Dougie. ‘Let’s take that as our starting point. It’s all true: everything he said. The murders. The bodies in the garden. The Sabatier knives. That’s the gag. It’s true, but it’s the wrong house. If we found the right house, we’d have the bodies, and we’d have him, it would be definite and certain proof of his evil fucking - whatever. But we don’t know where the bodies are, because we - yeah. That’s about it.’

  A moment’s pause. The hive-mind that was Five Squad was now fully alert and ready for the hunt.

  ‘So,’ said Catriona, ‘we dig. We trawl his past life. Every last detail. Map every house or flat he’s ever lived in under every one of his seven aliases and every property he’s ever viewed via an estate agent’s or online. Fine-tooth-comb the bastard to find the house he must covertly own.’

  Dougie shook his head. ‘Won’t work. He’s too clever. Cleverer than me, and as you know, I’m clever as all fuck. Gogarty knows the drill. He knows how to delete files from computers. He knows how to hide his trail. But that’s it, the house, that’s it. That’s the place he took ’em and it’s the place where he slew ’em too, I’d bet a year of my life on it. Matthew, Sarah, Julia, that’s where they all –’

  ‘Nah, bollocks: Julia was found in the alleyway. Near, if you recall, the warehouse flat which Gogarty was renting under an eighth alias, which none of you have mentioned yet,’ Ronnie pointed out, with aloof insolence.

  Dougie shrugged: true. ‘But,’ Dougie pointed out, ‘the warehouse flat was clean. Recently rented. So why did he take her there? Answer: I don’t know. Supplementary question: Did he take her to the other house first? The House We Want to Find House. Answer: I don’t know that either. Her parents were coming to visit her.’

  ‘Sorry, guv?’ said Gina, startled.

  ‘Julia. Her parents were coming to visit her. They weren’t all that close, you see, her and her dad, not since the mum died, and there were issues about – doesn’t matter. And Julia was a typical student, had the organisational skills of a pig in shit. So she wrote the name of the restaurant on her arm, to remind herself, in biro. Blue biro as I recall. Just like Sarah did. Just like Julia herself did later. Remember, she wrote the killer’s name on her arm, in blood, hence, all this. So, question: Why didn’t Gogarty spot it? Why did the bloody fool let her reveal his identity to us?’

  ‘Answer: Because he wanted her to.’ That was Taff.

  ‘Correct. He wanted her to trick him, so he could trick us. Julia was just his pawn. He duped her just as he duped me, except I should have known better, whereas she was just a kid who liked Quentin Tarantino films. Let me see the arm, Catriona.’

  Catriona typed, and the holo of the message carved in blood on Julia’s arm appeared.

  Gogartey kild me

  They all stared at the image. For a moment, the arm’s previous owner was recalled.

  ‘What do we notice about it?’ asked Dougie.

  ‘She can’t spell.’

  ‘Youth of today.’

  ‘Textspeak that’s what does it. LOL, that shit.’

  ‘She could spell,’ said Dougie, vexed. ‘She was doing a screenwriting degree. She showed me one of her screenplays.’

  Gina was blank faced; she hadn’t known that.

  ‘It was clever. Precise. Spell checked. She could spell.’ Dougie was firm on it.

  ‘Gogarty’s an unusual name. He must have said it to her out loud, and she didn’t realise it doesn’t have an “e”.’ That was Seamus Malone’s conjecture.

  ‘Gogartey with an “e y” is wrong. Looks wrong. No one spells it like that!’ insisted Dougie. ‘And “killed”. Why get that wrong? Why spell it “k, i, l, d”? Is that an abbreviation? Young people, help me out here.’

  ‘I’ve never seen it like that before,’ said Lisa Aaronovich: she was the youngest copper in the room.

  ‘E, e, e, e,’ said Dougie:
‘e, y. Except the “Y” looks like an “L”, with a squiggle after it.’

  ‘E One,’ said Gina.

  ‘E Y,’ said Dougie, as if to an imbecile.

  ‘Y, One. They look the same. E One. Post code.’

  Dougie thought. He knew, of course, that postcode.

  ‘Whitechapel.’

  ‘Whitechapel and environs,’ Gina agreed.

  ‘This is E One,’ said Dougie. ‘This nick is E One. Would Julia know that? Answer: Yes she would. She came here at least half a dozen times. To see me. And to see her family liaison. She’d know the area. So maybe she wanted to speak to us, that’s what the E One means, no that’s bollocks, that would be stupid, she wasn’t stupid. Better surmise: maybe that’s the postcode of the street where Gogarty took her before the warehouse. A house in East One. Round the corner from us. Gogarty’s further idea of a joke.’

  ‘She wrote the address on her arm too?’ said Gina.

  ‘She wrote the address on her arm,’ Dougie confirmed. ‘But she hid it. She couldn’t make it too obvious, for reasons we all know. So, supposition: Maybe Gogarty told her his name was Gogarty and she guessed it was an alias. And she also guessed that he knew she’d guess it was an alias. So she knew that her revealing his name wouldn’t spook him. He wouldn’t care if she wrote it on her arm. Because they both knew that surnames can be changed. But to write his actual address – ah, that’s what’s so sweet. ’Cause if he’d known that’s what she was doing, hiding a message in a message, then he would have been spooked. And he’d have done to her what he did to her sister.’

  Dougie was thoughtful a moment, recalling the arm-flaying.

  ‘Yeah but, duh, where exactly in E One?’ said Catriona. ‘Shall I check every household for someone resembling Gogarty?’ As she spoke she was already typing.