‘The DNA sample I took from his bone marrow hasn’t turned up any matches in the national database. So, if you can find me a direct or familial DNA sample to match it to, I’ll tell you who “Sheila” is. What I can tell you is that he was dead before the fire started, because there’s no smoke in his lungs.’ Foxy flicked the wall-mounted light box on, backlighting an X-ray of the man’s skull. ‘The blow to the back of the head is what killed him. The fracture itself is extensive and this darkened patch directly beneath the fracture is the resulting intracranial haemorrhage. He’d have died quickly. What’s left of his teeth tells me that he’s late 30s to mid-40s. I broke his hips and knees to straighten him out, so I can also tell you that he’s five foot ten on the right side and a foot shorter on the left.’
With a howl of laughter, Foxy threw the severed, bagged left foot at Jack – who instinctively caught it before dropping it onto an empty mortuary slab once he realised what it was.
‘Prick,’ he mumbled, trying not to laugh in case Ridley was still in a bad mood.
But Ridley was laughing, too. He seemed different with Foxy ‒ far more casual. Perhaps because there was no crossover between them, no stepping on each other’s toes. Ridley couldn’t do Foxy’s job if his life depended on it, and vice versa. All that left room for was pure, mutual admiration.
Foxy carried on talking. ‘Based on what’s left on the bones, I’d guess “Sheila” was around eleven and a half stone, twelve stone, something like that. And he’s white. So, no ID, but a great starting point for missing persons. You’re most welcome.’
‘Take that description back to the squad room and get them to put it into Missing Persons. Off you go.’
Ridley dismissed Jack with a wave of his hand.
*
It was a long day of desk and phone work, but on his way home, Jack took a detour through Hackney to drop in on Kenneth Moore, the Formula One engineer who had worked with Jimmy Nunn back in the seventies. Jack had an address, but no phone number, so he had his fingers crossed that Ken was in.
Outside the tower block, he called Maggie and left her a voicemail.
‘I’m going to be working late, so if you fancy a takeaway around midnight, I’ll bring one back with me. Text me if you can and . . . well, if you can’t, I’ll see you in the morning. Love you Mags.’
The lift in Kenneth Moore’s block was out of order and Jack figured out his flat had to be on the eleventh floor. God, he wished he’d had the man’s phone number. He looked at his watch: 9.30. Across the street was a social club. He’d check there before tackling eleven flights of stairs. Jack’s ‘gut’ was playing a big part in these two cases – the Rose Cottage fire and the search for Jimmy Nunn. He liked this change in himself and hoped it would be permanent.
Jack walked into the club and silence fell while everyone sized him up. They seemed to guess he was a copper.
‘Is Ken Moore here?’ he asked. ‘I think he might have known an old friend of my dad’s,’ he lied. ‘Jimmy Nunn.’
From the far end of the bar, a round, heavily bearded elderly man shouted, ‘I’ll only talk to you if you pay me the seventeen quid he still fucking well owes me!’
Jack turned to the barman. ‘I’ll have a Beck’s and whatever Ken’s drinking, and one for yourself.’
The barman obeyed silently and the club instantly relaxed back into its previous conversations.
By eleven o’clock, Ken had drunk four pints compared to Jack’s two bottles, he’d not drawn breath, and had said absolutely nothing of interest about Jimmy Nunn. The old man had no sense of personal space and no awareness of how bad he smelt. Jack was squashed into the corner of the room trying to keep a safe distance, but it wasn’t working. Every now and then, Ken’s knee would brush against Jack’s and he’d pull away, fearful of what the brown stain down the front of Ken’s beige trousers might turn out to be. Eventually, Ken started a story that was actually interesting. He momentarily slapped his hand down on Jack’s knee, and Jack could feel the clammy dampness of his fat palm.
‘I remember once, Jimmy was showing off to a couple of birds . . . You know that people say being in a rock band gets you all the women you want? You should try Formula One, Jack. Stone me!’ He opened his mouth wide and howled a hot air combo of beer and beef crisps into Jack’s face. ‘Me and Jimmy quickly decided which bird we were gonna ’ave ‒ and then, for some reason I’ll never fathom, he decided that the quickest way into her knickers was to climb the massive fence between them and us, instead of opening the gate . . . which was right there, by the way! Not locked or anything. Course he fell on his arse, didn’t he? Them women walked away laughing their beautiful tits off and Jimmy lay on the ground screaming at the top of his voice, “Me arm! I bust me arm!” And he had. I thought he’d dislocated his shoulder, but he’d actually managed to chip the socket and snap his . . . You know, this bit . . .’ Ken prodded Jack in the clavicle. ‘What a prick. This was just days before the most important race of his life. Jimmy could have been a big name in Formula One, but instead, he vanished without a trace.’
‘People don’t just vanish, Ken.’
‘His name popped up a couple of years later in connection with the Fisher brothers ‒ you know them? Big names down Soho way.’ Jack shrugged. The name ‘Fisher’ meant nothing to him. ‘That’s ’cos you’re a baby. I’m going back a good forty or so years. When proper gangsters ruled the streets, not skinny kids with guns who shout the odds at each other from opposite ends of the estate. That don’t take balls.’
‘How was Jimmy Nunn connected to the Fishers?’
‘Well, all Jimmy could do was drive cars and fix cars, so it must have been one of those two things.’
Ken necked his pint and then looked sideways at Jack. Jack took a £10 note from his wallet and dropped it on the table.
‘I’ve got to go, but you . . .’
Jack’s mobile pinged. And before he could finish reading Maggie’s text, Ken was at the bar buying another pint and a cheeky chaser before Jack left.
‘Keep the change!’ Jack shouted.
*
Jack and Maggie sat in the canteen, eating noodles from a non-specific takeaway right by the hospital’s A & E entrance. It wasn’t a Chinese, or an Indian, or a chippy ‒ but cooked all three amazingly well. As Maggie shovelled the last king prawn into her mouth and listened to Jack, she felt guilty for not being on the rowing machine instead. But he needed her.
‘So, yeah, he was a right prick, by all accounts. Smashed his shoulder and his dreams, all because he was showing off to some woman he fancied. And he must have been with Trudie at the time, so he was an adulterer as well. Nice guy.’
‘It’s not “by all accounts”, is it?’ Maggie reasoned. ‘It’s one account from a man who, by the sound of things, will turn up in A & E with liver failure by the end of the night!’
Jack looked so disappointed in the man he could have ended up calling ‘Dad’. Maggie reached across the table and stroked his arm.
‘Jimmy must have been, what, late twenties in Ken’s story? Of course he was showing off to women. That doesn’t make him a prick, it makes him a boy. He could be a professor of engineering by now. And, if he’s not, who cares? You’ve got to remember, Jack, that this man you’re looking for isn’t your dad. Your dad is the man who’s off on a world cruise tomorrow.’
‘Jesus, is it tomorrow?’
Jack had been told the date they sailed, but hadn’t expected it to come around so quickly.
‘They sail at two, so they’ll need to check in by midday. The cruise is for four months, love, so . . .’
The missing words from the end of Maggie’s sentence were . . . this could be the last time you see Charlie.
Jack’s mind drifted off for a moment as he contemplated his dad dying at sea.
‘Do they have coffins on board cruise ships?’
‘Dozens.’ Maggie smiled gently. ‘Most passengers are well over 70. You know, Jack, you�
�ve been given a unique opportunity to get everything right, for the rest of his life. Take them for lunch and tell them that you love them. They both need to hear that, I expect. Penny and Charlie will have a wonderful time . . . until the moment it stops.’
CHAPTER 7
Jack stared in awe at the gigantic cruise ship in front of him. It was seventeen decks high, the top six of which tapered off into the sky like a pyramid. From where Jack stood on the dockside, he could see palm trees, water slides, a climbing wall and a zipwire on the top decks. It was staggering. Hundreds of Asian-looking men and women scurried up and down each of the decks, brimming with purpose and commitment. They would wait on his parents hand and foot, making them feel like they were the most important people in the entire world – not because they cared about his parents having a good time, but because they, and their families back home, would rely almost entirely on the size of the tip left at the end of the cruise. But Jack balanced that cynical thought by wishing them all well, as he was certain how hard it must be sucking up to strangers 24/7.
This ship was taller than Jack’s apartment block and wider than the M25. It was like Vegas and Florida all rolled into one self-contained dream holiday. His parents would love it. He could see them now – they’d walk the decks each morning, drink champagne with breakfast, lose nightly in the casino and eat themselves silly.
Jack checked his ticket to the Isle of Wight for the umpteenth time. Still there. He had only loosely planned his line of questioning for Ester Freeman. He wasn’t one for being boxed in by pre-emptive thinking, and would rather let Ester’s answers guide how their meeting went. He’d be late sailing, but he had his excuse planned for when Ridley asked; he was going to say that he’d been dragged into helping the Port Authorities to control a problem passenger. Ridley wouldn’t be able to bollock him for that.
Jack’s mobile rang.
‘Where are you, darling?’
‘Look up, Mum. See the massive white cruise ship?’ Jack joked to Penny. ‘Head for that.’
He smiled as he slid his mobile into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. As Charlie and Penny ambled towards him, they looked as though they hadn’t got a care in the world.
‘We’re here!’ Penny laughed.
*
There were numerous high-end restaurants in and around Southampton Docks, but Jack took his parents to a small pub. Charlie and Penny were not complicated people, and nor was the food they liked to eat.
Charlie and Jack both ordered steak and chips, and Penny ordered chicken and mushroom pie. She always ordered pie when she went out because she’d never been able to master the art of making pastry – ‘I like to order something I’d never have at home, otherwise, what’s the point?’ They shared a bottle of red and talked and talked, but not about anything important. Nobody mentioned Charlie’s cancer, or the fact that he might never set foot on English soil again.
After they’d eaten, Jack left his parents in the pub, while he nipped to Penny’s car to collect their suitcases. Penny had parked in the long-stay car park, in the furthest space of the furthest zone ‒ this was because she was of the firm belief that car thieves only steal from cars close to the exit in order to make a quick getaway.
Jack said goodbye at the check-in desk; the hugs were extra tight and extra long, and everyone said those underrated, underused words: ‘I love you’. The things that we assume go without saying but that should be said every day.
Charlie took Penny by the hand and her thumb automatically stroked the back of his hand. Penny would be Charlie’s rock . . . until the day she came home alone, and Jack would then be her rock. Penny kissed Jack’s cheek and led Charlie on to the cruise ship.
From the dockside, Jack searched the thousands of faces across all of the open decks. Eventually, he saw them. Charlie and Penny were leaning close to each other against the rail, with a glass of champagne in one hand and a tiny Union Jack in the other.
Jesus Christ. Jack laughed to himself. They’re going to be pissed before they’ve left Southampton.
Suddenly, his laughing turned to crying and he had no idea how to stop. Safe in the knowledge that he was surrounded by strangers, he let the tears roll. The maniacal, mass waving went on for at least forty minutes until the ship’s horn finally blared and, painfully slowly, the ship started to move away from the dockside. Penny blew a thousand kisses down to Jack, and Charlie repeatedly gave him the thumbs-up. Jack walked the dockside as far as he could, waving and smiling. He could no longer distinguish his parents from the people around them, but he hoped they’d be able to spot him ‒ seeing as he was the only person following the ship out to sea.
Jack checked his ticket to the Isle of Wight for the umpteenth time.
‘Shit!’
He turned tail and raced for the ferry . . . which turned out to be the second ship that day he watched disappear without him.
CHAPTER 8
The facilities on the Isle of Wight ferry came a very poor second to the cruise ship that was currently heading towards St Lucia with Charlie and Penny. Jack imagined that, by now, they’d be in an open-deck restaurant eating as much shellfish as they could ‒ the extravagance of it would be too much for Penny to resist, and as long as Charlie had a drink in his hand, he’d do whatever kept her happy. Jack smiled at the thought of his parents trying to ‘fit in’ with the other posher passengers . . . then he wondered how many more passengers had gone to sea to die. And his smile disappeared.
Jack had researched the Fisher brothers, using various police databases and Google. The name of Fisher had been slurred by Ken Moore towards the end of their evening together; the mention had been brief, but it was the only lead Jack had for now.
Arnie and Tony Fisher had run a club in Soho, which had been the subject of numerous failed drug, gambling and underage prostitution raids. Arnie Fisher was clearly the smart one, keeping his criminal activities well concealed. He was slick and charming with a penchant for young men, but he was also known to be ruthless and brutal when the mood took him. Arnie was a slimy character, with eyes like a shark – unreadable and terrifyingly soulless. He never got his hands dirty but, throughout the seventies and eighties, the police suspected his orders had resulted in numerous unsolved robberies, assaults and murders. Tony Fisher, on the other hand, was an out-and-out thug. He loved being hands-on, loved fast cars and tarty women, loved terrorising and torturing – Tony was a dangerous psychopath and had a rap sheet to prove it. Jack had to scroll three times on his mobile screen to get from the top to the bottom of Tony’s police record.
One newspaper article from 1984 covered the brutal murder of a man called ‘Boxer’ Davis. It seemed ‘Boxer’ had been a low-level, gullible dogsbody whose loyalties tended to shift towards the biggest pay packet. He was loosely connected to both the Fishers and to Harry Rawlins ‒ and he was murdered in the spring of 1984. According to police reports at the time, ‘Boxer’ had been in a Soho alley when a car crushed him against a wire fence, backed up, drove over his body twice more, then drove away. Nobody saw a thing. ‘Boxer’ was found among the rats the following morning by a chef throwing out the slops.
This was the seedy world that Jimmy Nunn had frequented once his Formula One career went down the pan. Jimmy stuck with the only thing he knew how to do – driving – and he must have done it well, because he never served any substantial amount of time in prison.
Jack called Laura.
‘Would you do me a favour, mate? Would you get hard copy police records for Arnie and Tony Fisher?’
‘Course,’ Laura chirped. ‘Who are they?’
Laura was so smitten with Jack that she blindly misinterpreted how he called her ‘mate’. She thought it was an endearment – when in fact, from Jack’s perspective, it was just easy, non-committal and levelling. Everyone was ‘mate’ to him.
‘I’m digging about in the pasts of the women from The Grange, and Dolly Rawlins’ husband was a big-time crook back in the seventies and e
ighties. The Fisher brothers were around at the same time and . . . I dunno. Might be something, might not.’
‘Ester gave you those names, did she?’ Laura asked.
Jack looked up. Ahead of him was the stunning Cowes harbour, with its motor cruisers, yachts and tall ships. Laura jabbered away in his ear.
‘I bet she’s a rough old hag by now, isn’t she? I mean, she was bloody ropey in her younger days, so, Jeez . . . Did she try it on with you? Old habits die hard and all that.’
Then she giggled.
‘She wasn’t in,’ Jack lied. ‘I’m waiting—’
The ferry tannoy screeched and the announcer told passengers to make their way to their cars and get ready for disembarking in East Cowes. Laura clearly heard.
‘Oh, my God, Jack.’ She glanced around the squad room and lowered her voice. ‘You’re still at sea?’
‘Don’t let Ridley know.’
Jack sighed heavily and he was sure she could hear the tension in his voice. She probably thought that Charlie had died unexpectedly suddenly, so he felt he had to correct her.
‘No, Dad’s fine. Well, he’s not fine, but . . . They left on a world cruise this morning and, seeing as I was in Southampton anyway, I bought them lunch before they set off. It might be the last time I see him. I can’t tell Ridley that though, can I?’
‘I reckon he’d understand, you know,’ Laura empathised.
‘I’m not taking the risk. I’ll be at Ester’s within the hour, and back by early evening.’
‘He said to be back by end of shift.’
Anik entered the squad room. He guessed Laura was talking to Jack.
‘Well, he won’t hear it from me,’ she continued. ‘I’ll dig out the Fisher brothers’ records for you, it’s no problem ‒ I’m on Missing Persons, but I can do both. You take care and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Laura hung up. She didn’t need to glance up to know that Anik had a disapproving look on his face.
‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll just get on with your work,’ she said.
Buried - DC Jack Warr Series 01 (2020) Page 7