by Graham Ison
“Hallo, looks like a bit of movement.” The senior of the two detectives, a sergeant, watched closely through one of the narrow slits in the side of the nondescript observation van. “Here, Wayne,” he said, “What d’you think?”
Corporal Wayne Higgins peered out through the other slit at the figure now emerging from the house which had been under constant observation since their arrival. “That’s him,” he said. “Here, Taff, have a look.”
Private Farmer now applied an eye to one of the slits. “That’s him,” he said. “That’s Jock.”
“Do we follow him, skip?” asked the other detective.
“No, we don’t. The guv’nor just wanted him ID’d, and we’ve done that. Now we can go and have some breakfast, once we’ve made a call.”
*
At about the time that Corporal Wayne Higgins and Private “Taff” Farmer were confirming that John Tanner was, in fact, the “Jock” they had spoken to in Cyprus, Fox was sitting down opposite Chester Smart in West End Central Police Station.
After a night in the cells, and an examination by the divisional surgeon who had confirmed that, remarkably, the pimp had been uninjured by his fall, Smart had regained his former truculence. He lolled about in his chair, his legs stretched out and his long arms hanging loosely.
“I am Commander Fox… of Scotland Yard.”
“Congratulations, man,” said Smart, apparently unmoved by this announcement.
“Where d’you live?” asked Fox.
“I don’t live nowhere, man,” said Smart. “I’m what you call a night person. I just flit from place to place.” He moved slightly. “But I want to know what I’ve been arrested for. You can’t just go about arresting innocent citizens, holders of British passports an’ that.”
“Anna Coombs, a prostitute, once worked for you,” said Fox without preamble.
If Smart was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. “I ain’t never heard of the lady,” he said.
Fox smiled and lit a cigarette. “You’ll have to do better than that, Chester, old fruit,” he said. “You see, I have firm information that she was one of your girls. And that she worked Shepherd Market and that you lived partly or wholly on her immoral earnings.”
Smart shrugged an extravagant shrug. “So what? Lots of people go about telling lies about me.” He waved away a cloud of Fox’s cigarette smoke. “That’s very bad for your health, man,” he said.
“Michael Leighton,” said Fox and gazed at the prisoner.
“Martin Luther King,” said Smart.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Fox.
“Nothing in particular. I just thought you was playing some sort of word association game.” Smart grinned insolently.
“Where were you the day before yesterday, at about ten o’clock in the morning, Chester?”
Smart looked at the ceiling. “Difficult to say without recourse to my diary,” he said. “And that is in my car what someone feloniously stole from me last night while you was running about arresting innocent folk like me.” But Smart’s car had been searched thoroughly and, to no one’s surprise, had yielded neither his diary nor anything else of evidential value.
“Why did you run away when you were challenged by police?” asked Fox. He had already examined the statement made by DC Bellenger.
Smart opened his eyes wide. “Is that who they were?” he said. “Well, bless my soul. To tell you the truth, Mr Policeman, I heard this man shout at me and I took one look at him and I thought to myself, here’s a robber, I thought. London is such a dangerous place and thinking that I was about to be mugged, like so many other innocent folk, I decided to run away.” He shook his head slowly. “Now, if he had told me he was a policeman, I would have stopped immediately. Naturally.”
“Naturally,” murmured Fox. Although Bellenger had admitted failing to tell Smart that he was a police officer, Fox knew damned well that it would not have made a scrap of difference even if he had uttered those immortal words.
“Now, if there’s nothing further, I’ll be going on my way,” said Smart, grinning all over his face.
“Certainly,” said Fox, and for one moment DI Evans, who had been seated beside Fox throughout the interview, thought that he meant it. “I’m quite happy to admit you to police bail.”
“Well, that’s it, then,” said Smart, shuffling his feet.
“Once we’ve verified your address,” said Fox and stood up, beaming down at the prisoner.
*
“I’m afraid that I’m going to need Jack Gilroy’s team for another twenty-four hours, Gavin,” said Fox. “This bastard Smart refuses to come across with his address. We’ve done a registration check on his car, which is still in Hyde Park pound, but it’s a duff address, needless to say.”
“What’s the plan then, guv’nor?” asked Brace.
“I want every ponce in the West End squeezed until the pips come out,” said Fox. “Or more specifically, until one of them surrenders Chester Smart’s address. And any other information that happens to surface.”
Brace shook his head wearily; he knew when he was beaten. “Very good, sir,” he said.
“Bless you, Gavin,” said Fox and glanced at his watch.
“And now,” he added, “I must go and see the Commander Operations at Central. I need a few ‘feet’ to help out.”
Brace suddenly felt an uncharacteristic and heartfelt sympathy for the Uniform Branch commander whose office was high above Whitehall.
Twenty-one
Fox was sitting in his office, stirring fretfully at his coffee. But it was not the coffee that was causing his impatience; Brenda, under Fox’s tutelage, was probably now the best coffee-maker at Scotland Yard. No, Fox was impatient with the slowness of his enquiry. And with the intransigence of Peter Frobisher, the Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Operations.
Webb and Pritchard were locked up, remanded in custody and awaiting the deliberations of the Crown Prosecution Service. Chester Smart was also locked up. But, although strongly suspected of murdering Anna Coombs, he had only, so far, been charged with carrying an offensive weapon and living on the immoral earnings of prostitution, the last probably being too tenuous to secure a conviction. And John Tanner had been “housed” to an address in Lewisham where, this very morning, Detective Superintendent John Craven-Foster was mounting an operation to arrest him.
Despite all this, the Assistant Commissioner had insisted that Fox attend the monthly Crime Summary and Assessment Meeting, a pet event in Frobisher’s calendar.
*
Unlike Chester Smart, John Tanner had not become over confident; he had just become careless. Having convinced himself that no one knew where he lived, he saw no reason to exercise caution when he was moving around the Lewisham area. And that suited the police fine.
At eleven o’clock precisely, Tanner emerged from his house and glanced up and down the street. But he failed to see anything suspicious about the observation van, a different van from the one used by the two soldiers the previous day, which was parked at the end of his road. Elsewhere in the vicinity, obscured from direct view and sweating in their bullet-proof body armor, a team of armed police from the Yard’s tactical firearms unit waited, together with numerous other police officers, ready to close in on Tanner the moment they got the signal from Craven-Foster. Having discussed strategy at some length, it had been decided by the police that it would be counter-productive to storm the house where Tanner lived. Suspecting him to be “armed and dangerous”, as the police say, such an operation would create unnecessary risks and, on the basis of previous experience, might well result in failure. Consequently, the decision had been made to take him in the open.
“He’s on the move, guv,” said a detective’s voice over the personal radio network, unable to disguise his satisfaction that, after so many hours of inactivity, something was happening.
The upright figure of Tanner, attired in jeans and a blue shirt, strolled casually down the road towards Hilly F
ields, unaware that at least ten pairs of eyes were watching his every movement.
Minutes later, as he was walking along Brookbank Road, the police swept into action. One moment the street was empty, the next it seemed to be filled with vehicles and the sound of screaming tyres. Four detectives leaped from cars that had scarcely stopped and grabbed Tanner, forcing him to the ground. As he twisted his head, he saw that he was surrounded by a ring of very aggressive policemen, all of whom were levelling firearms of a varying nature at his head.
“What the bloody hell—?”
“John Tanner, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder,” said Craven-Foster formally. Craven-Foster was a very formal sort of detective. “Anything you say—”
“You’ve got the wrong bloke, mate,” said Tanner. The words came out in a series of grunts because he was still pinned firmly to the ground.
*
Fox read the message that the secretary had brought into the conference room and then glanced at the Assistant Commissioner who was seated beneath the forbidding portrait of Sir Richard Mayne, one of the first two commissioners of the Metropolitan Police.
“I’m afraid something very important’s just cropped up, sir,” said Fox, “if you’ll excuse me.” And without waiting either for Frobisher’s permission or his inevitable protests that there was nothing more important than this meeting, he rose, nodded briefly to the other Specialist Operations senior officers and left the room.
Returning to his office, Fox promptly issued two orders. The first was that Tanner should be brought from where he was being held at Lewisham to Belgravia Police Station, and secondly, that Tanner’s house was to be searched with all due despatch. Then he strolled up to the Commanders’ Mess for lunch.
*
Fox leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. For some time he gazed at the relaxed man sitting opposite him. Although Tanner was wearing jeans and a shirt, he was immaculate. The jeans were pressed and the shirt clean and freshly-ironed, its sleeves carefully rolled to mid-forearm. He was clean-shaven, and his black leather shoes had obviously been polished every day, including today. There was an indisputable air of the soldier about him.
“Jock,” said Fox.
Tanner smiled but said nothing.
“Also known as John Tanner, yes?”
“If you say so,” said Tanner.
“What were you doing in Cyprus?”
“Who says I was in Cyprus?” Tanner did not seem at all dismayed that Fox knew that much about his recent movements and even smiled at the irony of a police car passing the police station at that very moment, its siren wailing.
“We know for a fact that you were there between the twentieth and the twenty-ninth of June,” said Fox. “On the twentieth, you were seen talking to two British soldiers—” Fox was careful not to compromise Higgins and Farmer. “—And on the twenty-ninth, you spent some time with a prostitute in the red-light quarter of Paphos.”
Tanner smiled again. “So?” he said. “Is that a crime?”
“Were you there?”
Tanner shrugged. “You’ve just told me I was, old son,” he said. “And you blokes never make mistakes, do you? I mean all these miscarriages of justice that I’ve read about in the newspapers recently is all fiction, isn’t it?”
“Why were you there?” demanded Fox.
“I don’t have to tell you,” said Tanner, “but just to put you out of your misery, I was on holiday. That all right, is it? I mean, I’m not fiddling the social security and I’m not drawing the dole, so if I feel like going on holiday, that’s okay, isn’t it?”
“So you were on holiday?” persisted Fox.
“Yeah.”
“Were you stationed there when you were a soldier?”
“Who says I was a soldier?”
“I do,” said Fox irritably. He was growing weary of this cat-and-mouse game, but he knew that he was facing a real professional. A check with the Ministry of Defence had revealed that although there were one or two John Tanners currently serving with Scottish regiments, the last one to be discharged had left some fifteen years previously. And he had been a Scotsman from Perth. But apart from that, this John Tanner was too young to have been out of the army for fifteen years anyway.
“Yeah, I was stationed there. So what?”
“But under another name,” said Fox.
“Maybe.” And then Tanner also grew tired of the questioning. “D’you want to tell me why I’m here? That guy said something about murder—” he gestured at Craven-Foster. “—but I told him at the time that he’d got the wrong man.”
“I have reason to believe that on or about the thirtieth of June this year you murdered Michael Leighton, Patricia Tilley and Karen Nash on a yacht some fifty miles off the Cyprus coast,” said Fox.
Tanner threw back his head and laughed. “Ye Gods,” he said, “You’ve certainly got an imagination, mate, I’ll say that for you.” He leaned forward. “Well, if you think that you’re going to force a confession out of me,” he continued quietly, “You’ve got another think coming. I’ve got nothing to say, and that’s the way it’s staying. And, by the way, I’ve changed my mind. I want a solicitor.”
*
Detective Inspector Evans had been put in charge of the team that was searching the house which Tanner had rented, fully furnished, some weeks previously.
The detectives, aided by scenes-of-crime officers, followed a set plan. Starting at the front door, they moved meticulously through the house, step by step, until they reached the loft. The outhouses were searched thoroughly, the dustbins were emptied and their contents examined, and the insides of the chimneys, apparently unused for some time, were carefully inspected.
The police found nothing that would assist their case. No guns, no correspondence, no personal belongings. Apart from a few items of clothing and the usual toiletries, it was as if Tanner had never been there.
Fox was not satisfied, and that meant that Evans was not satisfied. They started again, this time prepared to rip up floor-boards, slit open mattresses and, if necessary, to start dismantling the house itself.
*
Fox’s onslaught on the pimps of the West End was fierce and concentrated. He had spoken to the Commander Operations of the Central Area and explained what he was seeking. The result was that as many uniformed police as could be mustered flooded the area, backed up by the territorial support group.
The pimps disappeared as if by magic, thinking that they were the subject of police interest. Some of the prostitutes, recognizing the futility of trying to pick up “tricks” with so many policemen about, went home. But a defiant few still hung about, wondering why there was such an intense police presence and wondering too, how long it was going to continue. But they didn’t have long to wait to find out.
Detective Inspector Jack Gilroy and his team of officers moved into the area and began to question the women. It was always the same question.
“Know Chester Smart, do you, darling?” asked DC Bellenger of a sultry blonde in shorts and a blouse that was open to her navel, and who was leaning nonchalantly against a wall, her black-nylon-clad legs apart.
“Never heard of him, love,” answered the blonde. She would not have admitted it even if she had known. “Why?”
“We want to know where he lives,” said Bellenger. And the added request, that if the girl should happen to hear, she should get in touch with the Flying Squad, did little to placate her or the other girls. Or their minders when this disturbing news reached them. Which it did, very quickly.
By the time the operation had finished – at just after midnight – there was not a single pimp who did not know what the police wanted. And the threat, that they would be back tomorrow night, and every night until they found out, did nothing to hearten the pimps or the prostitutes whose trade had stopped as suddenly as a train hitting the buffers.
*
It was at half-past eleven the following morning that Evans, w
hose team had been at work for most of the night, answered a knock at Tanner’s front door.
“Mr Tanner, is it?” A bespectacled man stood on the doorstep, clutching a clipboard.
“No,” said Evans. “I’m a police officer.”
“Oh,” said the man, “has there been an accident?”
“Not yet,” said Evans, upon whom, in recent months, some of Fox’s humor had rubbed off. “Who are you?”
“Mr Williams. I’m from Lewisham Council.”
“And?” said Evans.
“It’s about the lock-up, you see,” said the man from the council, staring down at his clipboard. “We’ve had notification from a Mr…” He searched for the name on his list. “Ah, here we are, a Mr Miller, that Mr Tanner has rented a garage from him.” He paused. “That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“What is?” asked Evans.
“Both names of tradesmen, Miller and Tanner.”
“Hilarious,” said Evans, “but what about Messrs Miller and Tanner?”
“Mr Miller has told us that he wishes to stop paying council tax on the garage because now that Mr Tanner has rented it, he, that is Mr Miller, thought it only fair that Mr Tanner should pay the council tax.” Williams glanced up at Evans. “It’s a bit complicated, I know, but—”
“Come in, Mr Williams, come in,” said Evans warmly, and reached out to take hold of the man’s arm lest he should escape.
*
Fox’s operation to discover Chester Smart’s address was repeated for a second night and created for the vice trade its own little recession. This time, prostitutes were arrested in droves and a few men, prepared to pay for sexual gratification, found that they too had suddenly interested the police by their actions.
It was enough. At ten o’clock the following morning, an anonymous telephone call to the Flying Squad office gave the police what they wanted. As far as the vice trade was concerned, Chester Smart had suddenly become a pariah.