But what Thornwyn’s interest in Bartolome’s information would be was the question I couldn’t get my head around. On their own, the disparate pieces of information he had would mean nothing, but to the right persons they could be of vital significance.
Any lingering fondness for my ex-boss Neville Thornwyn was disappearing as rapidly as bath water down a plughole. I resolved to ensure he answered for everything he’d done but had not been charged for. Whilst he’d not killed Paul Sampson himself, he was as culpable as if he had, and he was going to pay for this as well, one way or another.
“Thornwyn was arrested just afterwards, wasn’t he, and he went down a couple of weeks back, didn’t he?” Bernie happily said. “I ain’t got him leaning on me to do things anymore, so I’m off the hook.”
It was time for Bernie to learn the facts of life.
“Not quite. Noel Partias is dead, Bernie, did you know that?”
“Dead?” His eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Yeah, and what’s worse for you, he was found dead in your flat.”
“In my flat?”
“Yeah. I found him there when I was looking for you. The DS who came in with me wants to nail you to the floor about it when I’m finished in here.”
“Oh, Christ, I didn’t kill him, swear to God I didn’t.” His voice had risen an octave. He was worried and he was scared.
“Any idea who might have done?”
“Thornwyn?”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “He’s been in custody the past few months, so it’s unlikely to be him killed Partias.”
“Could have been Turley,” he suggested. “He was owed money as well. I couldn’t take Partias but I bet Turley could.”
I nodded. I didn’t mention I’d already thought of that.
I left Bernie to fret anxiously whilst I found DS Roberts. The news of Partias being found dead in his flat had scared him.
“Wasn’t him. He didn’t kill Partias,” I stated.
Roberts nodded. “Does he know who did?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “but from what he’s just told me I think I know who might have done, and it connects to something the Branch is pursuing, so we’ll take this case now. Who’d have thought a twerp like Bernie’d ever be useful, eh?”
“Yeah. So what about him?” He nodded to the interview room. “I haven’t gotta let the scrote go, have I?”
“No. He had a knife on him when he was brought in. Hold him on that for a while. He’s given me some useful leads and I’m gonna follow them up. I’ll be back to deal with him when I’ve checked something out.”
Roberts agreed Bernie would be detained to help police with their inquiries. This was a practice frowned upon by the appeal courts, holding this to be an unlawful interference with the liberty of the subject, but just about every force did it. I had no qualms whatever when the person being detained was as guilty as sin, and Bernie was absolutely not without sin.
It’d been a long day but I still had one more thing to do. I called around to Andy Harris’s flat on my way home. He was in. Psyching myself up for his wasteland I entered his flat, but, to my astonishment, the place was unrecognisable from the landfill it’d resembled recently. Everything had been tidied away and cleaned up. There were no clothes strewn about, no dirty crockery and no stale smells in the air. Every surface had been tidied and polished and there were empty fast-food boxes in the bin. Even Harris looked like he’d been brushed up and scrubbed. It was the tidiest I’d ever seen him look.
He was sitting next to the woman who’d turned his slum into something inhabitable, the place looking cleaner and tidier than I’d thought it was capable of ever being.
“Alright, who’re you two and what’ve you done with Andy Harris?” I stared at both of them. He was looking loved-up and happy.
“This is my mate Mr Jack,” he said to her. I was his mate? Harris thought of me as his mate? “Mr Jack, this is Stella.”
I said hello to her. She was probably around mid-forties, pretty for her age, well turned out, and she looked like she could do so much better for herself. I wanted to ask her where she’d met Harris and in particular what on earth she could possibly see in an urban wretch like him, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment for either of them.
“Hello.” She stood up and we shook hands. Her voice was pure North London. “Andy’s told me about you.”
I frowned. “Only the good bits, I hope.”
I apologised for how I’d roughed him up in the pub earlier and assured him it was done with the best of motives as I hadn’t wanted anyone there thinking he was an informer.
“That’s alright, Mr Jack, I ain’t hurt. Made me a hero in the pub, it did, being turned over by the old Bill. Landlord gave me a free beer afterwards.” He grinned.
I withdrew £20 from my wallet. His eyes lit up.
“Have a few more on me. And don’t use it to gamble either.”
“Money I bet earlier? I won £250 with it.” He smiled, looking proud.
I left quickly before I snatched my £20 back.
S E V E N
Wednesday
I now had a good idea of what Thornwyn had been engaged in. He’d put the squeeze on an MP and had ultimately involved him in taking sensitive confidential information from Bartolome Systems. The issue for me was, had Sampson taken this information voluntarily or under duress? He would have known the importance and the commercial sensitivity of what he’d taken, as well as the significance of it were it ever to become public. What would he have been thinking at the moment he handed the envelope to Bernie?
As well as being blackmailed, Sampson had been at odds with his father-in-law concerning his sexuality and had been threatened with losing his seat on the board, if Jeremy Godfrey was to be believed. Could this have been a factor in his helping to steal confidential information? Was he trying to get back at his father-in-law?
Thornwyn had also been the instigator of a robbery at a gun shop which had seen weapons being stolen and then sold on to a known jihadist based in the UK. The man who’d arranged the sale, Noel Partias, was now dead and I suspected I knew who’d killed him.
The reality now was that Thornwyn was in so deep he was likely to drown in this cesspool of intrigue he’d created. I wondered if MI5 know exactly what he’d been engaged in. More worryingly for me, did they still think I was part of it as well? I’d been concerned by Gillian Redmond’s comments about Stimpson thinking I was part of whatever grand scheme Thornwyn had concocted relating to the theft of Bartolome’s commercially sensitive information.
I needed to talk to Smitherman about what I now knew, as I wasn’t certain which end to approach this from. He wasn’t in his office. I was told he was at a meeting the other side of the river, which was code for saying he was visiting Thames House, HQ of MI5. I left a message asking to see him when it was convenient.
Byzantium had its shop on the Battersea Park Road. I drove there and parked on double yellow lines fifty yards away. I looked in the shop window and saw a wide array of firearms, ranging from small-calibre handguns up to high-powered hunting rifles. It also sold a wide range of bullets, binoculars, flak jackets and many other essentials for the gun nut and the wannabe survivalists who assumed they had whatever it took to be Bear Grylls. It made me conscious of the fact I was armed as I entered the shop, with my service pistol resting neatly in its holster under my left shoulder.
After discovering Smitherman was unavailable, I’d decided I was going to unearth as much evidence as I could about Neville Thornwyn and then bury him up to his neck in it. One way to do this was to confront the person I now knew to be his accomplice, the manager of Byzantium, the man who’d smoothed the way to the guns being easily stolen. There could have been no robbery without his inside help.
At the counter I showed ID, emphasised I was Special Branch and asked for the manager, Edward Priestly. The assistant went to the back of the shop. I looked around and noticed CCTV cameras in the four corners of t
he shop. Convenient they had just happened not to be working on the night of the robbery.
A man approached and introduced himself as the manager. I told him we’d speak in his office.
Looking unhappy, he turned and I followed him into his small, oppressive and windowless office. There were pictures of handguns and other kinds of firearms on all four walls, many of which I didn’t recognise. He sat down behind his desk but I remained standing. Experience had taught me that standing upright was an advantage when looking at a defendant who thought his bases were covered.
“I’d like to talk to you about the robbery you had here a few months back,” I began. “You know the one I mean.”
“Why’s that?” He sounded displeased at having to go over it again. “I’ve already spoken to police about it. I’ve told them everything I know.”
“Perhaps, but you spoke to CID. I’m with Special Branch and you haven’t spoken to us about it. I wanna talk about it because we’re interested in the security implications of the robbery. Our belief is the weapons taken that night have ended up with jihadists in North London and it’s important we ascertain exactly how such weaponry might have ended up with these people.”
He sighed. “Okay.”
“You see, what we in the Branch don’t get is the sheer coincidence of the CCTV not working and someone being able to enter these premises by using the appropriate passcode, which I’m told only a few people know about. It’s also remarkable the alarms didn’t sound when the thieves entered the place. I mean, the odds on your being eaten by a shark in the Thames must be greater than all those three occurring on the same night, wouldn’t you say?”
“What are you implying?” His eyes narrowed.
“Not implying anything. I’m simply saying this was an amazing coincidence. What’re the odds someone could just come here, punch in however many numbers or symbols they’d need and then, bingo, Aladdin’s cave opens up for them?” I was being intentionally flippant. “We were told it’d take an expert hacker some time to crack the code to get into your storeroom, but whoever came in here that night did it in a heartbeat. Amazing, eh?”
“Police have investigated the robbery and they’ve accepted what you just said must have been what happened.” He was trying to remain calm.
“So I understand.” I nodded. “But, you see, the thing is, Special Branch doesn’t believe the story you’ve given to police, and we’ve good reason not to. You wanna know why?”
I stared directly at him. He was looking uncomfortable because he had no pre-prepared story. Thornwyn hadn’t primed him for Special Branch involvement.
“It’s because I’ve spoken to one of the guys who actually came in here that night and he’s spilled his guts. Told us the whole story, he has.” I paused for a few moments to build up the tension. “And he’s named you as being involved.”
“Me?” He was clearly trying to sound incredulous but didn’t succeed.
“Yeah, you, Edward. We know the whole deal. I’ve spoken to the two guys who were here that night and they both tell more or less the same story, about being given a key to enter the shop, having the passcode to access the place where the weapons were stored and being able to do so undetected because CCTV was temporarily malfunctioning. They knew exactly where to go to get what they stole. I doubt they were in here even ten minutes.”
He sat motionless for a few moments.
“You know what else is interesting about this?” I asked. “They’ve also both, independently, named the same person as being the brains behind the robbery that night.”
“Who’s that?”
“The very recently disgraced Commander Neville Thornwyn.”
At the sound of Thornwyn’s name, a look of shocked horror registered on his face. He couldn’t have looked more surprised had he just seen his own daughter on stage, almost naked and wrapped around a pole.
I said nothing. I waited. Priestly knew there was no hiding place now. I was waiting for him to realise cooperating with me was his only chance to do himself some good.
“Thornwyn was behind this, wasn’t he?” I asked. “The only way something like this could have happened was with inside help: yours. You gave him the passcode and blacked out the CCTV, didn’t you?”
He didn’t speak. He was looking at me but not seeing me. My story had shaken him up, which was my intention from the outset. It was now just a question of whether he played stupid or did the right thing.
I decided to prompt him. “CID believed your alibi for the night in question, didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did.” He nodded, looking hopeful.
“Okay. If you’re so sure your alibi’ll hold up, let’s go see whoever it was alibied you. I’ll tell him or her what I’ve just told you, but I’ll also point out, if they’re bullshitting me, that’s a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice charge right there. But if they’re telling the truth, they’ve nothing to worry about, have they? Neither have you.”
He remained in his seat. I waited a few moments.
“You think whoever it is’ll be prepared to go to prison for you when I whisper words like obstruction of justice to them? It’s a serious offence to obstruct police in the execution of their duty, especially where terrorism’s involved.”
His eyes opened wide when he heard the word terrorism. “When a jihadist uses weapons to achieve his objectives, that’s what we in the trade call terrorism, in case you weren’t aware of that, Edward,” I said whilst watching him shuffling slightly in his seat. “Why d’you think jihadists want weapons? They’re not for souvenirs; they want them to make some kind of political statement, and the ramifications aren’t always palatable either.”
I waited a few more moments for him to gather his thoughts. His certainty that any evidence trail wouldn’t lead back to him had been shattered and he’d been caught out.
“So, what’s it to be, Edward? You gonna tell me the truth about this or do I arrest you right here, right now, and have you charged with conspiracy to commit burglary, as well as being a party to supplying weapons to a terrorist? You know what you’d get for that?”
He sighed audibly. He was trapped in a corner and he knew it. He bowed his head slightly for a long few moments, then looked at me with a forlorn expression.
“Okay. You’re right,” he said. “Thornwyn was behind it.” “Tell me how it all came together that evening.”
“He came to me one time, told me he was planning to rob this place. He wanted some of the weapons we were storing. I thought he was joking but he was in earnest. I asked why. He said someone needed firearms so he was gonna get them for whoever it was. I didn’t think he was serious so I pointed out all the security we have here, the constant monitoring of CCTV, access to certain rooms only by a passcode which regularly changes, the alarm system and so on, thinking that’d deter him, but he said, no problem, you’re going to help me do it. I told him I wasn’t, but he said, if I didn’t, he had enough evidence to prove I’d been defrauding Bartolome and he’d give it to the fraud squad.”
“Was this a credible threat? Had you been stealing?”
He didn’t reply. His breathing became more noticeable. Had he been strapped to a polygraph machine, the lines on the paper would have been wildly diverging.
“I know you used to work for them and had been there quite a lot of years. Is that why you left a senior management position to come here and run a shop selling guns?”
He thought about how to answer the question.
“I wasn’t doing anything others there weren’t doing,” he protested.
“Look, I don’t care what you did at Bartolome, my main concern’s the robbery.”
He looked like he was in pain. “Thornwyn said he had enough evidence of my activities at Bartolome over a number of years to have me put away, so he told me straight: help him out or face ruin.”
“So you helped him,” I said accusingly.
“What would you have done, eh? I didn’t have any choice.”
>
“Keep telling yourself that, you might even believe it yourself one day.”
He didn’t like that comment, but I didn’t care what he liked. He continued. “He told me what night it’d be taking place. I know a bit about CCTV so I nobbled the computer, made it look like a malfunction, and I gave him the day’s passcode.” He shrugged. “You know what happened afterwards, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do. You reported the robbery next day and were investigated by the very man who you say coerced you into helping him, and he gave you a clean bill of health, didn’t he, so you were in the clear.”
He nodded.
“I know where the weapons ended up as well,” I said. “That’s why this goes beyond being just another robbery for CID to investigate. Did you consider what Thornwyn wanted the weapons for or where they might end up?”
He didn’t reply.
“Thought not. Were any other employees here involved?” “No, just me. They knew nothing about what was gonna happen. I didn’t wanna get them into any trouble so I said nothing to them. They were all cleared by police.”
“What did Thornwyn give you for your help, pieces of silver?” I asked in a sarcastic tone.
“He said he’d bury the evidence against me if I helped him out. I agreed.” My allusion had gone over his head. “The thing I can’t understand is how he would have got hold of it in the first place. How would Thornwyn have been able to access confidential information about me?” He sounded bewildered.
As he spoke, I realised where Thornwyn would have got it from: Paul Sampson. Sampson had probably been told to dig up the incriminating evidence against Priestly to use as leverage to get him to go along with the plan to rob the shop. Would Sampson have known what Thornwyn wanted this information for or would he just have gone along with it?
I looked at Priestly and smiled. “I know how he did it, and if it’s any consolation, you’re not the only person Thornwyn was squeezing. That’s how he was able to get the dirt on you.”
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