Charley watched him leave. She prayed she was doing right by him, and the others – the victims of the crimes they were investigating – by putting her faith in him. Charley emitted an unladylike burp, the acidic taste of partially-digested cod and chips welling up from her stomach. Thankfully, she knew from years of eating fast food, usually cold fast food, that indigestion never lasted long, but that didn’t stop her feeling how she did. Legs tucked beneath her, she settled down and read on.
Chapter 27
Faisal Hussain, Charley read, was a career criminal. From quite a young age, the local criminal masterminds had his life mapped out, as his file showed her his quick succession up the ranks of the drug world. He was presently being investigated, believed to be one of the linchpins for a network which traded drugs from Birmingham to the Black Country, and to Oxford, London and Bristol. His drug-dealer customers were also believed to be acting as national co-ordinators, facilitating onward supply to other criminal gangs all over the UK. At thirty-two he was considered to be at the top of his tree on the West Midlands drug scene – far enough up the tree now to keep his hands clean. However, if evidence could be secured by the National Crime Agency whose radar he was under, he wouldn’t stay clean for long. Warning red text markers highlighted VIOLENT and KNOWN TO CARRY WEAPONS on his personal file. It appeared he wasn’t afraid to use them.
A few stretches in prison, notably for money laundering, possession of an offensive weapon and possession and supply of class A drugs, had resulted in a growing list of known associates.
It seemed Hussain had nothing to lose, living in the extreme luxury he was currently enjoying. He was in that world too deep to leave it alive.
However, if the corpse was involved with Hussain, there was no suggestion that he had ingested drugs, nor was there any evidence that the victim had been in possession of drugs when he was shot. That troubled Charley, because she knew that drugs, like rats, were never far from trouble, and you couldn’t get more trouble than a murder. Keeping an open mind in order to glean from the intelligence only the facts which could connect Hussain to her enquiry, she knew she couldn’t disregard him from her investigation, on the basis that he had links with firearms, coupled with the fact that he had been in the area within the timeframe that the experts had given her for the death of the male corpse.
If Mr Raglan wasn’t fazed by Hussain and his threats, he should have been, Charley thought, having read his profile. She had known people shot for no more reason than looking at the likes of him in a way that they thought was disrespectful. Deaths that occurred by means of an execution-type killing were nothing new when rival gangs decided it was time to expand their turf or to deal with someone stepping out of line. Word of this style of death taking place would be enough to spread fear, and silence the would-be grass for good. Not always for fear of recrimination on themselves, but for the threat of death or torture of their family members, whom on most occasions were a much easier target.
Elbow on desk, chin in her hand, Charley spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Who the hell was the male corpse? Why was the DNA result taking so long?’
Once again, Charley scanned the positive lines of enquiry. They had been lucky in as far as they had the teeth of the corpse, a metal plate used to mend a broken bone and DNA. ‘If only we knew who the victim was,’ Charley thought again as she sat back in her chair and let out a deep sigh. She desperately wanted to pick up the phone and chase everyone, but she knew once they had information to impart she would be the first to know.
Instead, Charley picked up a pen and started to list possible links to the Dixons, James Thomas, Raglan and Faisal Hussain. She could find only one – Crownest. How else could these people be linked in another way? She shook her head. Mobile-phone analysis may shed light on her enquiry, but first she had to find relevant phone numbers, and she knew this information wouldn’t be easy to come by, because some criminals used burner phones.
In the world that the likes of Faisal Hussain lived in, it didn’t make good business sense to keep the same number for long.
Charley could only see one way forward, and that was to keep enquiries tight and focused, at least for now. The ground beneath the team’s feet was still being cleared, which was necessary before they could change direction to follow up other possible lines of enquiry.
* * *
It was six o’clock in the morning, and still dark, when Charley set off for the police station the next day. As she stepped out of her door the icy wind was so strong it nearly took her breath away. Yet for once she was grateful for the cold air; it cleared her head of the nightmares that had plagued her all night. Now, she was left with a dull ache. There was a hard frost on the windscreen and on the ground. She breathed deeply to fill her lungs. ‘Today will be a good day,’ she told herself. Settling down in the driver’s seat, her teeth chattering, she started the engine. Mornings were Charley’s favourite time of day. There was a period of stillness between the time the night birds and criminals went to bed, and the morning people got up. Usually at this time of day she felt calm, but today she felt agitated. The pain in her head spiked when her phone rang.
She dug her mobile out of her pocket with her gloved hand, but the shrill tones continued to pierce the inside of the car, as irritating to her as nails being scraped down a chalkboard. ‘I’m not on-call,’ she wanted to scream as she tore her glove off to answer the call. Suddenly, there was a loud crack as the phone slipped through her fingers and hit the floor. Charley swore under her breath. Now the screen was likely to be broken and the phone call might have been urgent. Annoyed with herself, she picked it up off the floor.
Head slumped against the car’s headrest, she exhaled and released her hold on the phone. She closed her eyes, and clenched her jaw. When she opened her eyes, it seemed lighter. She looked down at the screen as it lit up and rang again. Putting the phone to her ear she looked across at the horizon to see the morning sun had broken free from the clouds.
‘Charley, it’s Eira from Forensics. Sorry for the early call, but I’ve some exciting news that I knew you’d want to know immediately.’
Charley felt her heart miss a beat. Her eyes were on two crows on the roof of her house. Their beady eyes were trained on the rubbish bin, they wouldn’t miss an opportunity today, and neither would she. ‘Go on,’ she said.
‘We’ve obtained a DNA profile link on your male found shot in the head at Crownest.’
Charley raised her chin to see her hooded eyes and pale cheeks in her rearview mirror instantly turn brighter and glowing. ‘How sure are you that it is a match?’ she said eagerly.
The SIO could hear the smile in Eira’s voice, ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s a match all right.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, on the back of a sigh of relief.
‘It’s my pleasure,’ Eira chuckled. ‘I don’t know how he fits into your enquiry though.’
‘Why? Have you run it though the database already? Who is it?’
‘Yes, your deceased is one Faisal Hussain.’
Charley was silent.
‘You okay? Charley, you’re very quiet. Are you still there?’
‘I wasn’t expecting that. He’s just come into the periphery of the enquiry.’
‘Well, it’s definitely him,’ she said.
Charley slammed both hands on her dashboard. ‘Result!’ She shouted so loud that the crows in the trees took flight.
Chapter 28
Charley couldn’t wait to get to the Incident Room, and as soon as she arrived she was reeling off instructions for enquiries that required urgent attention.
‘I want the other identifying factors, the metal plate from Hussain’s leg, and the enquiry into the teeth, to be continued,’ she told the team at the morning briefing. ‘They’ve been started so they may as well be concluded. They all add weight to the evidence.’
Ricky-Lee entered the office late to the sight of Tattie pouring tea into his favourite mug. Annie shuffled up to allow him to pull up a chair at th
e table. He puffed his chest out in an exaggerated manner. Annie tried her best not to stare at the overnight tan, and his muscles on show in his white short-sleeved shirt while he dug into his bag, from where a strong smell of bacon emanated. ‘Can I tempt you to a sandwich? I got several from the shop,’ he said, with a wide smile.
Wilkie looked at the Rich Tea finger between his finger and thumb, and slowly, but purposefully, put it back on the plate that Tattie was offering him. ‘That does smell good, I suppose the biscuits can wait.’ Tattie smirked.
Charley tucked into her sandwich, but her eyes showed suspicion. Ricky-Lee showed her a smile of perfectly white teeth. There was a twinkle in his eyes.
Wilkie let out a groan of appreciation. ‘I think this is the best bacon sandwich I’ve ever had,’ he said to Ricky-Lee.
‘Do you think that Hussain had caught up with the Dixons’?’ asked Annie.
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’ said Wilkie. ‘Why else would he end up dead, in a tunnel behind a fireplace, in a stranger’s house?’
Annie pulled a face. ‘Wonder if he had a gun with him to avenge his uncle’s death when he found them?’ she said.
Wilkie chuckled. ‘Yeah, well it serves him bleedin’ right if his plan went tits up, and he ended up the victim.’
Annie cocked an eyebrow. ‘The Dixons were obviously faster on the draw that day.’
‘Or had they been expecting Hussain?’ said Mike.
Annie scowled. ‘How come? As far as we’re aware, he wasn’t an associate, was he?’
Ricky-Lee rolled his eyes in her direction. ‘He means someone gave them a tip-off.’ Annie gave him a shove.
‘Raglan?’ said Mike.
Charley had listened to them before speaking.
‘We’re making assumptions,’ said Charley, not sure whether she was talking about her assumption of why Ricky-Lee appeared to be on top of his game this morning, or about the enquiry. ‘Where’s the cabriolet, his mobile phone, and the rest of his personal property, including the gold rings Miss Finch talked about?’
‘The Dixons were not the type to hang on to things, I would suggest,’ said Wilkie. ‘They’d be sold on before his body was cold.’
‘Probably,’ said Charley. ‘Find out if the cabriolet was registered to Hussain. If so, the automatic number plate recognition system seems to be a good place to start finding out where he might have travelled, and when. Who knows what the Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras will have picked up that would be useful to us?’
‘Maybe we’ve found out the real reason why the Dixons left Crownest suddenly, and it’s not the story that Raglan told us about his threatening them and their leaving. That was all bravado,’ said Mike.
Charley picked up a pen, and threaded it through the fingers of her hand. ‘I understand that Raglan doesn’t appear to be a physical threat without a gun, but what doesn’t sit right with me is that if the Dixons did the deed without anyone else to help them, how the hell would they know about the tunnel behind the fireplace?’
Ricky-Lee shrugged his shoulders. ‘We know Hussain was shot with a weapon that the Dixons are known to have used before, because the gun has been linked to the previous armed robberies, but I’ve been thinking that to dispose of a body at the house they were renting was taking one hell of a risk, don’t you think?’
‘I agree, but they would have known that the house was about to be demolished, wouldn’t they, so they might not have seen it as such a risk?’ countered Mike.
‘Was the house deliberately set on fire then, and if so by whom, because this would have triggered an early demolition for safety reasons?’ said Annie.
Charley had been making notes throughout, so that all the lines of enquiries would be included on the database. ‘I suggest we speak with the relevant family members about Faisal’s death first, then I’ll speak with Connie at the Press Office. Until we’re ready, the media don’t need to know that we have identified the male corpse,’ she said. ‘I also want a team led by Mike to go to Birmingham and speak with whoever Hussain lived with. His next of kin hopefully,’ Charley shook her head from side to side. ‘That’s if we can find an address for him. Then I want Raglan brought in prior to our sharing the I.D. of the victim to the public. That way it will give him less time to think about what he has planned to say should the body ever be identified. In addition to that I want the intelligence I requested on Raglan and James Thomas ASAP.’
Ricky-Lee caught up with Charley as she was about to go into her office.
‘The reason I was late was that I called in for an update from the team we tasked with getting into Seth Alderman’s grave. There was no body, no bones, nothing, just steps down into a grave-sized empty space. So perhaps, as we suspected, it was just an access to the tunnel, until the roof collapsed,’ he said.
‘Or, was it a meeting place,’ said Charley, thoughtfully. ‘Well, at least we know there isn’t another skeleton. That’s a relief! But where is Seth Alderman’s body laid to rest then?’
When Charley settled in her chair behind her desk, the detective hung about at the door.
Charley looked up after a moment or two. ‘Was there something else?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Nice aftershave,’ said Annie, as she passed him. Head turned, he walked out.
Annie stood in front of Charley’s desk, paperwork in hand. She showed her lip to Charley. ‘The gee-gees again, do you think?’
Charley shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care. He’s had the Scarborough warning, he’s a grown man, the rest is up to him.’
‘Scarborough warning?’ enquired Annie.
The question brought a smile to Charley’s face. ‘I keep forgetting you’re not from round here. There are a few ideas of where the saying comes from, but I like the one from the thirteenth century that talks about the implementation of the law back when the town’s judicial privileges and immunities were confirmed by royal charters. The result was that offenders soon found themselves severely punished, and the town gallows were in constant use.’
Annie looked confused. ‘I thought a Scarborough warning was a colleague that complained of symptoms of a bogus illness, the day before a particularly good weather forecast, and then when they didn’t turn up for their shift the next day, they were said to be on Scarborough leave?’
‘Really? Believe what you must, but I prefer to think of it as the Halifax gibbet-law, given that the gibbet was used on our doorstep.’
Annie pulled a face. ‘You don’t really mean it, do you? In terms of Ricky-Lee?’
‘Oh, yes, I do! You get one chance in CID and he’s already got his head on the block,’ said Charley.
Chapter 29
Wilkie sat watching Annie. It was half past ten, and unusually for her, she was still at her desk. ‘Isn’t it about time you were off out, young ’un? You’re not going to catch y’man inside, as they say.’
A complacent smile crossed the young detective’s face, but she didn’t look up from her typing. ‘Why, Mr Dinosaur, didn’t you know that the ease and influx of information sharing, invention of social networking, and the development of technology for telephones, has drastically changed the volume of information available now online, and the way we communicate since you last struck a bat?’
‘Cheeky mare, I don’t know what you mean,’ the older detective said grumpily, as he drank the dregs of his coffee. It was cold. Wilkie pulled a face, but finished it anyway. Tattie turned from her audio-typing and he flashed her a smile, and lifted his cup. ‘Time for another,’ he mimed, but Tattie wasn’t to be distracted.
Annie’s mobile phone pinged. Wilkie frowned. He saw her lips turn up at the corners as she read the text. Immediately she pushed her chair back and stood up. Unspeaking, she looked extremely pleased with herself as she headed directly for Charley’s office door. She knocked and the SIO beckoned her inside.
‘The cabriolet Hussain was using. He bought, and paid for it in cash at a North
wood Garage, Birmingham,’ Annie said. ‘The salesman distinctly remembers that Hussain brought the money in a man’s brown leather shoulder bag. Apparently, he had reported it to the police, as is his firm’s procedure regarding cash purchases.’
‘What’s the number plate?’ said Charley, pen poised.
‘5. M.A.C.K. The number five on the private plate looks like a letter S, illegal, of course, but he’s feeding his ego, because it reads “SMACK”.’
Charley scoffed. ‘Nothing like advertising the fact that you are into drugs, but, hey ho, makes it easier for us.’
Annie looked over Charley’s shoulder to see Annie’s clapped-out orange VW Beetle through the window, sitting out in the yard. ‘My first thought when I see a young man driving around in a very expensive car, is, what proceeds of which crime paid for it?’ said Annie.
‘Being observant is what being a cop is all about. Proving that a lifestyle is funded by the proceeds of a crime however is not always that simple, as you’re more than aware. Those kinda machines are the dealers’ status symbols, don’t forget. Car dealers are used to the likes of Faisal Hussain walking in with cash. How else are you going to get rid of excessive amounts of dosh, if you don’t spend it on ridiculously expensive cars and jewellery, which are nice and visual but a sure way to get our unwanted attention.’
‘Any news on the ANPR enquiry?’ asked Annie.
‘No, but it’ll be interesting to see what they can come up with, and if there have been any sightings of the car since Hussain’s murder.’
‘It’s hardly likely to be still being driven around though is it, unless it’s on false plates?’
‘Who knows?’ said Charley. ‘Time will tell. In the meantime, we will have to be patient.’
Annie strolled back to her desk, throwing Wilkie a cunning smile.
‘I’d have got the information in the end,’ said Wilkie.
‘Course you would,’ said Annie as she sat down, allowing herself to feel a little smug satisfaction.
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