by Nick Louth
‘That’s Michael Houghton,’ Townsend said. ‘From the timing on the device, the message was left yesterday while Oleg was on his way to be interviewed at Staines police station.’
‘That is very dim,’ Michelle said, a frosting of icing sugar around her mouth. ‘To leave a message.’
‘He was trying to avert a bigger problem, by the sound of it,’ Gillard said.
‘And a landline is often better than a mobile,’ Singh said. ‘You can be pretty sure that any electronic message these days is going to be intercepted once a guy has been arrested. I presume he thought that the Met had finished the search of his home and wouldn’t be going back in to check the answer machine.’
‘Let’s forget about the circumstantial,’ Gillard said. ‘Oleg clearly knows that he could be accused of the killing. That’s what Houghton is referring to. We need to know the how-done-it.’
‘I’ve been working my way through his Instagram account,’ Townsend said, but then stopped when a radio crackled into life.
Assistance required! PC Butterfield, Westgrave staff car park. HELP!
Then there was a scream, cut off by a buzz. Then nothing. The meeting was abandoned and they all scrambled out, racing down the steps.
Chapter Seventeen
Five minutes earlier
PC Zoe Butterfield was standing in the formal garden which bordered Westgrave Hall’s staff car park, sipping a coffee. DC Carl Hoskins had been kind enough to give her a mug full of freshly brewed coffee when she’d finished her turn as sentry for the mobile incident room. There weren’t many staff about, so the slow approach of a black Mitsubishi Warrior pickup from the northern track drew her eye. She made her way to a gap in the high and carefully trimmed box hedge for a better and concealed view. She watched the vehicle reverse up to one of the storage rooms in the stable block. Oleg’s huge bodyguard, Marcus Dolan, emerged from the Mitsubishi. She had taken a statement from him over the road rage incident in which Colin Hill claimed to have been pinioned on the bonnet of his own car.
She didn’t like Dolan.
She didn’t like anyone who thought themselves above the law.
Dolan peered around in a way that invited suspicion, and as he passed out of her view she heard what sounded like the rattle of a padlock. Many of these storerooms had been locked, but some had not yet been fully searched. Christmas staffing difficulties, as usual. But each of them carried a hefty Surrey Police padlock. She heard soft cursing as Dolan discovered this. He returned to the Mitsubishi and came back with a metal toolbox. He was clearly up to no good. She felt like calling it in, but suspected it would be several minutes before anyone could arrive and the crackle of her radio would alert Dolan to her presence.
The splintering sound of wood signalled that Dolan was breaking in. Butterfield approached and confronted him just as he was carrying a photographer’s hefty silver case to the open rear of the pickup truck.
‘Excuse me, have you just broken into a police-secured storage unit?’ she asked.
He gave her a grin, the same impervious look he’d worn when she had tackled him about the attack on Colin Hill.
‘Don’t worry, baby, it belongs to the Volkovs,’ Dolan said. ‘I’m just getting rid of some junk for them, don’t bother yourself about it.’ He pushed the box onto the flatbed and went back into the storeroom.
‘Sir, I’m telling you to stop.’ She advanced, and watched him inside the garage-sized unit, picking up a long wooden crate from among a pile of boxes.
While his back was turned, she walked to the open driver’s door and pocketed the keys from the ignition.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he said, having slid the second box onto the flatbed.
‘I’m arresting you,’ she said, and clicked on her radio to make an all-points call. She had hardly begun to speak when he ran at her. She shielded herself with the open truck door, then darted around the front of the vehicle to the passenger side, still calling for help on the radio. He slammed the driver’s door and went after her. What she hadn’t expected was his athleticism. The big man put one hand on the bonnet and pivoted on it, leaping across the truck at her. The scissor kick aimed at her head only missed because she ducked, but smashed into her arm and knocked the radio from her hand.
She tried to run. But he was on her in a second and pulled her effortlessly off the ground. She managed a piercing scream, cut short as a giant fist crashed into her midriff. She doubled up in breathless agony. Dolan slung her onto the bonnet of the Mitsubishi as if she weighed nothing, holding her with one hand while he searched her for the keys. She tossed them as far away as she could, hoping that they would slip down the nearby grating. The big man swore and threw her off the truck bonnet. She landed a dozen feet away and scrambled to her feet in front of the pickup as he scooped up the keys.
She felt at her waist for the Taser, snug in its holster and buried under her hi-vis jacket. It wasn’t a great location for a quick draw. Dolan had jumped into the Mitsubishi and gunned the engine before she could take proper aim. The vehicle was moving, forcing her to jump aside. As she fired, the Taser’s wired darts bounced off the vehicle without apparent effect. The pickup slid past; she dodged the shoulder-height wing mirror then lunged in over the back. She was only five foot four, and just managed to grab at the longer crate, a few feet in from the open tailgate before she rolled off onto the gravel. The box had moved, but only a third of it overhung the flatbed. Dolan sped away, leaving her sitting on the ground, winded, silently cursing her luck.
A quarter of a mile ahead, as the Mitsubishi bounced over a cattle grid, she saw the box fall. If Dolan noticed, there was no sign. Sirens indicated that perhaps he had bigger things to worry about. Two patrol cars sped past, in hot pursuit.
* * *
Half a dozen detectives stood in a circle in the storage room Dolan had broken into, watching Gillard crouching by the now-retrieved crate. PC Zoe Butterfield had given a breathless account of what happened.
‘Dolan will be caught in a little while, but I think we may already have our answers here,’ Gillard said.
‘Let’s open it,’ Hoskins said. The box looked military, with white stencilled markings in a language they didn’t understand.
‘Sir, we should get the anti-terror laddies to take a wee look first,’ said Rainy Macintosh. ‘We dinnae want it to blow up in our faces.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Gillard said. ‘If it didn’t blow up after falling off the back of the truck, I think we’re safe.’
‘Dolan didn’t handle it as if it were dangerous,’ Zoe added.
Gillard flicked open the catches and lifted the lid.
‘There’s an AK47 automatic rifle, and some ammunition,’ he said. Looking in more closely, he said: ‘Aha! There’s a lot of sticky white marks on the barrel, just like on the golden gun.’
‘What is the significance of that?’ Michelle asked.
‘It’s gaffer tape, and now I think I know what it was used for,’ Gillard said.
‘Any idea what was in the other box, sir?’ Zoe asked.
‘Yes,’ Gillard said, with a smile. ‘Let’s get back to our meeting, and I’ll share my thoughts. Vikram, can you retrieve those little bits of plastic you found at the crime scene?’
‘It might take me a few minutes to find them in the van, sir,’ he said.
Gillard led all but Singh back into the Khazi, then announced: ‘I think I’ve cracked it. The method, at least.’
‘Go on then, sir,’ said Carl Hoskins.
‘Maxim Talin, Alexander Volkov and Bryn Howell were, as we know, shot by the golden pistol. But no human hand fired it.’
‘What?’ asked Michelle. ‘Someone’s got to pull the trigger.’
‘No. Oleg’s gun was taped to a hobbyist drone.’
‘What, one those wee four-rotor jobbies?’ Rainy asked.
‘Yes.’ There was a stunned silence, so he continued. ‘It was set up so it could be remotely fired from a wireless console.’
> ‘So we’ve been wasting our time scouring CCTV looking for the killer entering or leaving the library,’ Hoskins said.
‘That’s right,’ Gillard said. ‘Using the drone, which would have an onboard TV camera to guide it, meant that the killer didn’t even have to enter the library.’
Chapter Eighteen
Michelle Tsu was shaking her head. ‘Sir, maybe I’m being dim, but I still don’t see how it’s possible. How do you pull the trigger?’
‘The same way a camera attached to a drone is operated. You just need a solenoid to turn electricity via magnetism into a mechanical action, something like that. You don’t need much force, and with lightweight components it’s not difficult these days.’
The assembled detectives shared an ‘aah’ moment.
Rob Townsend nodded. ‘There are lots of military drones about, quite small ones. The Israeli army special forces have been using one little bigger than a hobbyist’s device to blow up Syrian anti-aircraft missile sites from a mile or two away.’
‘Aye, so it was the Kremlin after all,’ Rainy said.
‘Not so fast,’ Gillard said. ‘With the miniaturisation of electronics, yesterday’s military muscle is today’s hobbyist indulgence. Not cheap, but well within the budget of anyone in the Volkov family. I think I can show you.’ He sat down at a terminal and called up the database that Townsend had put together of Oleg Volkov’s hobbies. ‘I think I glimpsed something, just when I was dozing off,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if I can find it. Yes, here it is.’
It was a video set in some desert hills, clearly not the UK. A big pickup truck was in the foreground, with Oleg dressed in sunglasses, T-shirt and camouflage trousers. He was talking in Russian at the camera, as he assembled a drone about three feet across, with four rotors, one at each corner. Gillard was no expert, but the device resembled many of the hobbyist devices he had seen. However, one of the components fixed to the underneath of the drone was a slim metal cylinder about as long as a toothbrush, which he attached with some screws, all the time continuing to talk to the camera held by his friend.
‘This is the last bit I remember – it’s the worst possible moment to fall asleep,’ Gillard said. ‘But I have a hunch what comes next.’
‘A gun,’ Townsend said.
‘Exactly.’
Oleg pointed out the handheld console to control it, and there was one word that Gillard finally understood: ‘PlayStation.’ The console controlling the drone was from a gaming device.
The young Russian then attached a kind of plastic cradle to the belly of the drone, and then picked up something off camera.
The golden gun.
He slid the pistol into the cradle on its side. He spoke on camera in Russian, but from his hand movements it was clear the gun needed to be attached sideways, so that when the extended magazine was fitted it didn’t interfere with the drone’s landing gear. He then fixed it in place with gaffer tape and attached the cylinder to the weapon’s trigger with a retaining hook. The drone took off under Oleg’s control, and after hovering briefly set off at speed towards the first target. The crack of gunfire elicited great enthusiasm from Oleg and his cameraman colleague, and after a half dozen shots they rushed forward to examine the targets.
It was a pretty so-so performance, perhaps not surprising given the weapon’s recoil, which jerked the quadcopter sharply backwards.
‘It explains the lack of footprints,’ Michelle said.
‘So the wee drone in question is in the other box that Dolan nicked from the storeroom?’ Rainy asked.
‘That’s what I’m thinking. The drone was probably set up in the library long before the party, perhaps on a high bookshelf. After shooting everyone up, it probably flew out through the open skylight.’
‘That would be a very precise piece of flying,’ Townsend said.
‘Yeah, that gap was pretty snug,’ Hoskins said. ‘I’m not sure that the big drone in the video would fit through.’
‘Maybe they used a smaller one. But it does explain why there were no footprints on the roof,’ Gillard said.
‘And no marks on the wall on the way up,’ Michelle added.
‘The skylight is on the far side of the pitched roof and not visible from Westgrave Hall, especially with everyone’s eyes on the fireworks,’ Gillard continued.
Vikram Singh, who just walked in with an evidence bag in his hand, said, ‘Oleg must have retrieved the drone, in order to get his gun back.’
Gillard nodded. ‘Do you remember Mary Hill saying that she saw someone looking in the lake in the small hours of Christmas Day morning?’
There was a collective ‘aah’ from the assembled detectives. ‘So that was Oleg looking for his drone?’ Singh said.
‘Hang on a minute,’ Hoskins said. ‘If it was flown with enough skill to get it out of the skylight, why did it crash in the lake?’
Gillard turned to the sergeant. ‘Perhaps you’d care to show us the evidence I asked for, Vikram?’
Singh donned latex gloves and opened the small paper evidence bag. He poured out into his hand the small fragments of grey translucent plastic.
‘Rotor fragments,’ Gillard said. ‘I had been wondering for a long time where these fragments came from, and about the inaccuracy of the shooting.’
‘Maybe firing from a drone isn’t that easy,’ Michelle said.
‘Yes, bullets everywhere, including a couple in the ceiling. This perhaps isn’t surprising if an amateur like Talin was firing, or the drone itself, but one of them embedded in the ceiling came from Bryn Howell’s gun, and his military record shows he is a marksman.’
‘Ah! I get it now,’ Rob Townsend said. ‘Howell was shooting at the drone, above him.’
‘And he hit it,’ Gillard said, pointing to the fragments of plastic in Singh’s hand. ‘These are parts of a quadcopter rotor. The drone had three other rotors and was patently not badly enough damaged to crash immediately, so it still managed to get out of the skylight. However, it may have been losing fuel or damaged in some other way, which might explain why it fell into the lake.’
‘Och, why didn’t he leave it there? What was the point of Oleg retrieving the wreckage and the gun, and then being dim enough to stow the weapon in his own Humvee?’ Rainy said.
Gillard smiled again. ‘There’s a simple reason for that. He didn’t.’
‘What?’ said Singh.
‘I don’t think Oleg is our killer.’
The room went absolutely silent.
* * *
Hoskins scratched his head. ‘Sir, I’m not with you. You just spent five minutes showing us Oleg practising with an armed drone, showing how it could be done, and now you say it’s not him.’
‘I’m with Carl on that,’ Michelle said, exchanging a glance with Hoskins before turning back to her boss. ‘How on earth did you come to that conclusion, sir?’
Gillard smiled at the puzzled faces of his investigative team. ‘Firstly, because the gun was actually planted in Oleg’s car. He was right about that. Nobody with the ingenuity to pull this stunt off would have been stupid enough to leave the gun in their own car.’
Several of the detectives nodded in agreement.
‘The second reason was the various glimpses we got into the conversations between Oleg and his mother, Yelena,’ he said. ‘I’d fleetingly thought about drones a day or so ago, when I first noticed gaffer tape residue on the handle of the golden gun. It had clearly been attached to something. The only other reason for using tape, to retain the extended magazine, didn’t seem to apply as the magazine fitted perfectly. However, I kept thinking back to Yelena’s witness statement, where she said she saw a bearded man in black with the gun.’
Rainy Macintosh’s brow furrowed ‘Aye, but she had changed her tune, hadn’t she? At first she claimed to see nothing, because she was in the panic room so quickly.’
‘Yes, but there is a certain motherly consistency, even amidst the lies,’ Gillard said. ‘Every false statement was made to p
rotect her son, even though she obviously saw the drone and, knowing his interest in them, believed it was him that triggered the gun.’
‘Protect him? When he killed Talin, whom she described as the only man she ever really loved?’ Shireen said.
‘Aye, I’d have dropped the wee sewer rat in it,’ Rainy said. ‘Spoiled egotistical gun-toting bastard.’
‘Really?’ Gillard asked. ‘If your son killed your ex, would you do that?’
‘Och, if Ewan had killed him, no. In fact I’d mint the laddie a wee medal.’ She waited until the laughter died down. ‘But if it was someone I still loved, well, I don’t know.’
‘Yelena would have been furious and bereft, devastated, but blood is still thicker than water,’ Gillard said.
‘Was it the text message on the phone that alerted you?’ Townsend asked.
‘Yes – despite clearly being angry with Oleg, and not replying to his messages, she was still baffled by his motives. Like we said before, using a burner phone and not signing off the message was designed to prevent us realising it was her. She didn’t want to tip us off.’
‘If our killer isn’t Oleg, it could be any of the guests at the party, if they were controlling the drone remotely,’ said Vikram Singh.
Gillard nodded. ‘It invalidates almost every alibi. In fact our suspects should still include all those who are now dead. Except perhaps Yelena herself.’
‘So the late Jason Lefsky is back in the frame,’ said Hoskins. ‘Mary Hill said it was a man in the boat, and may have had a ponytail. It if it wasn’t Oleg, then it was either Lefsky or Wolf.’