The Common Enemy

by Paul Gitsham

  He decided to change the subject slightly.

  ‘The coach they hired still had a few empty seats. Why didn’t you go?’

  Her eyes flicked away from Warren’s.

  ‘I had to look after Dale.’

  ‘I thought he was with his father this weekend?’

  Her mouth opened slightly; Warren could see her thinking furiously.

  ‘I was going to have him, but his dad changed his mind at the last minute.’

  She was lying. Warren could tell that from her body language, let alone the fact that she’d made it clear just a few moments ago that the relationship between her son and his father was dictated by court order. He doubted she would let her ex-partner change the terms in that manner.

  ‘OK. What about other times? Do you usually go with him? If you don’t have Dale.’

  Warren already knew the answer to the question. Garfield had told him they had no record of her attending any other rallies.

  ‘No, Tommy says it’s no place for a woman.’

  Her expression was unreadable. What she said wasn’t strictly true. Although Saturday’s jaunt had been a definite boys’ day out, there was a small core of female party members who often attended protests.

  Warren took out his notepad and a pencil.

  ‘We’re still struggling to fill in the details of exactly what took place that day. I could use your help.’

  He took her silence as acquiescence.

  ‘When did Tommy leave for the protest?’

  ‘He was up about seven-ish, I guess. He left here about eight after a fry-up.’ She smiled slightly at the memory. ‘He always liked to start the day properly, although I reckon he was mostly just lining his stomach for the journey.’

  ‘Where did he go then?’

  ‘He had to catch the bus to the pub where they were being picked up by the coach. I think he met Bellies on the way.’

  ‘What about his brother or his friend, Mr Davenport? I understand they live quite close.’

  Her eyes darkened slightly.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was everybody getting on the coach at the pub, or were they doing pick-ups?’

  She sneered slightly. ‘Why are you asking me? You videotaped them and followed them up the motorway.’

  ‘OK, so they left at ten. What time were you expecting him back?’

  ‘I wasn’t. He was going to spend the night at his mum’s, then catch the train back.’

  ‘Was Jimmy going to stay as well?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Interesting. Annabelle Creasy hadn’t expected her boyfriend to return that night, but Mary Meegan had made it sound as if the arrival of Jimmy and his friends had been a complete surprise and a result of his brother’s death. Nor had she mentioned that Tommy had been planning on visiting her. The Meegans didn’t strike Warren as the sort of family that spontaneously dropped in on each other without warning, confident of a warm welcome.

  So what was Tommy planning on doing that night? Was he going to stay with his mother? Or was he going to stay somewhere else?

  Chapter 16

  Warren emerged from Annabelle Creasy’s house having secured a grudging agreement to call him if she thought of anything else significant.

  Even in the bright, summer sunshine, the area was grim. Creasy’s house, like all those nearby, was at least thirty years older than it should be. The street reminded him of parts of Coventry from his childhood. Supposedly temporary houses had been slung up rapidly in the Fifties, both to replace houses destroyed during the Blitz and to house the wave of immigrants, mainly Irish, who had arrived to rebuild the devastated city. Decades on, the houses were still there, desperately in need of modernisation.

  Creasy’s street was opposite an overgrown cemetery. This in turn was overlooked by a huge, rusting, defunct gas works. The waist-high brick wall that divided the end of the short row of houses and the main road had been painted white once upon a time, perhaps in an attempt to smarten the area. All it had done was provide a blank canvas for graffiti. Some of the more offensive slogans and images had been crudely whitewashed – they could still be seen under the paint – but whoever was in charge of maintenance had finally given up. The wall was now awash with scrawled tags, the urban equivalent of a dog cocking its leg against a lamppost to mark its territory.

  If it hadn’t been for the presence of Theo Garfield, Warren wouldn’t have been surprised to find his car had been similarly decorated in his absence.

  Warren closed the wrought iron gate behind him; a rather pointless gesture given that most of the rotten wooden fence was lying flat across what could have been a flower bed with some care and attention. He was using a tissue to remove some of the rust and peeling paint from his hands as he walked back to the car, when he noticed an older man from the house opposite staring at him.

  Short and wiry, he could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, his paint-splattered vest revealing what Susan called a ‘PE teacher’s tan’; a dark mahogany brown covering his arms and neck in the shape of a T-shirt, surrounded by pasty white flesh. A roll-up cigarette hung from his bottom lip. Alone amongst the line of houses, his had a freshly creosoted fence, its metal gate a gleaming red. Instead of the cheap, faded, plastic numbers nailed to some of the front doors, his was a hand-painted plaque with what looked like oriental script underneath. Warren wondered if he had taken it upon himself to cover the worst of the graffiti on the end wall rather than waiting for the council to get their act together.

  Warren smiled politely as he passed the man.

  ‘Officer.’ The man’s voice was gravelly.

  Warren had given up being surprised at how easily people recognised him as a policeman. This wasn’t the sort of area that men in suits and ties tended to frequent, and after what had happened to Annabelle Creasy’s partner, it hardly took a master detective to figure out why he was there.

  Warren continued walking. Three more paces, he judged. He could see Garfield folding the newspaper he’d been reading – a copy of the Mirror he’d bought in a half-hearted attempt to fit in whilst he waited in the car.

  ‘This place is not exactly a bastion of Guardian readers, and I’m a Scouser so I’m certainly not reading The Sun,’ he’d commented with a slight curl of the lip on his return from the newsagent.

  ‘You could always listen to Radio 4,’ Warren had offered. ‘I hear Germaine Greer’s on Woman’s Hour.’

  Three paces exactly.

  ‘Officer?’ This time the voice was even quieter and grumbly.

  Warren paused and half turned.

  The man shuffled from foot to foot, coughed slightly then took another drag of his cigarette.

  ‘I ’spect you’re here about what happened?’

  Warren appraised the man carefully. In his experience, the merely nosy tended to be more explicit. The man was furtive and unsure; he glanced up and down the empty street.

  Warren said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Garfield was now standing by the car door.

  A few more seconds passed.

  ‘It’s probably nothing…’

  * * *

  ‘Well, that puts a different complexion on things,’ remarked Warren as they pulled away from the kerb.

  Garfield pulled at his lip slightly.

  ‘You think? I’m not sure he’s that reliable, and it’s just gossip anyway.’

  ‘It needs checking out, because if what Mr Procter says is true, then I’d say we have another potential motive.’

  At first Terrence Procter had been unsure of himself. However, after deciding that the two officers should come inside, away from public view, he became more confident.

  ‘I’m not going to lie, I never liked that woman and the people she brought into the area.’

  ‘That woman’ was Annabelle Creasy and Terrence Procter had watched with dismay as she’d moved in about eight years previously.

  ‘This place might not be the smartest in Romford, but fo
lks generally got on with each other. I’ve been here nearly fifty years and we used to fit right in.’ He inclined his head towards the mantelpiece, where a black and white picture of a strikingly beautiful Chinese woman took pride of place.

  ‘When Annabelle and her little boy moved in across the way, Kuangyu knocked on the door to say hello. She always did that.’ Procter smiled sadly. ‘I suppose the tattoos should have given her a warning, but Kuangyu never used to notice that sort of thing.’ The smile disappeared. ‘I don’t know what she said to my wife but she was still in tears when I returned an hour later.’ Now the memory was making him angry. ‘I wanted to go and have words with her, but Kuangyu wouldn’t let me. It was the last thing we ever argued about.’

  He cleared this throat.

  ‘Anyway, that was years ago. Kuangyu always told me not to dwell in the past.’

  ‘So what was it you wanted to tell us about?’ Warren asked.

  ‘That fella on the news? The one stabbed after that march?’

  ‘Yes, what about him?’

  ‘He was her boyfriend. I recognised his picture.’

  Beside him, Garfield shifted in his seat. He’d waited in the car whilst Warren had interviewed Annabelle Creasy, reluctant to reveal himself to such a prominent member of the far-right unnecessarily. However, it seemed curiosity had gotten the better of him when Procter had invited them in. Either that or he’d exhausted the Mirror.

  Procter picked up on Garfield’s impatience.

  ‘Which is why you’re here, obviously.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us what you know about Mr Meegan,’ invited Warren.

  ‘He was a nasty piece of work; I guess you don’t need me to tell you that.’

  Warren said nothing.

  ‘You only needed to see the tattoos to know. He didn’t live with her – I heard that she was fighting a custody battle over the little ’un and they were worried that it wouldn’t look good if a thug like him was living there.’ He sighed. ‘It’s probably too late now. The boy’s real dad wasn’t ever going to win any prizes for father of the year, like, but he was better than that Meegan and his mates. He tried his best, I heard him telling the lad off for using the P-word, but the kid just laughed. The old man was unemployed and couldn’t afford much. Meegan always seemed to bring something around when he visited.’

  So far, Procter had simply confirmed what Warren had already guessed.

  ‘His mates weren’t much better. They’d come round sometimes too. They used to get the barbecue going in the front garden and hang the speakers out the front windows. It’d be going on until gone midnight, shouting, swearing, racist language. They’d chuck their empties over the wall into other people’s gardens.

  ‘The police turned up once. I’ve no idea if somebody called or they just heard the racket and came to investigate. I thought it was all going to kick off but they eventually went inside the house and turned the music down. The next morning, both her neighbours had swastikas painted on their doors and dog muck smeared on the handles. Nobody ever called the police again.’

  Procter had been fiddling with a pack of cigarette papers whilst he spoke. Now he slid one out and produced a packet of rolling tobacco. The familiar action seemed to focus him.

  ‘Sometimes there’d be a dozen or so folks there of a night, all tattooed and wearing England shirts you know, but there were a few who came more often.’

  ‘Could you describe them?’ Warren’s instincts were telling him that the man’s story was edging towards the most important part.

  ‘All had shaved heads obviously. One of them I recognised from the TV, they said he was Tommy’s brother, Jimmy or something. Another was absolutely huge; looked like a bloody great tattooed whale. It was him that brought her fence down, when he got pissed and fell on it. The other bloke was the opposite, scrawny with loads of gold chain and a gold tooth.’ Procter’s mouth twisted. ‘I didn’t like the look of him much. I saw him the most.’

  ‘He was with Tommy?’

  ‘No. In fact he was usually there when Tommy wasn’t, if you catch my drift.’

  ‘Can you remember the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Yeah. He was coming out of there early Saturday morning. I saw him when I went to pick up the papers.’

  Chapter 17

  ‘So Goldie Davenport was bumping uglies with Tommy Meegan’s missus. It hardly makes him a killer.’

  Garfield was playing devil’s advocate and Warren appreciated the man’s alternative perspective; ordinarily he’d have relied on Tony Sutton to play this role.

  ‘I agree, but folks have certainly killed for less.’

  Garfield thought for a few moments.

  ‘Didn’t you say that Annabelle Creasy claimed that Tommy Meegan had left her place Saturday morning to go attend the rally?’

  ‘Yes, she said he left at about seven.’

  ‘Well, surely that blows away the theory that she was having an affair with Goldie Davenport? That old boy just said that he saw Goldie leaving Saturday morning, he didn’t say that Tommy wasn’t with him. Maybe he stayed over so they could get an early start the next morning. Perfectly innocent.’ He leered. ‘I suppose they could have been having a threesome, but that’d be consensual.’

  Warren took his left hand off the steering wheel and used it to count off points.

  ‘Taking them backwards, threesomes are rife with jealousy. Plenty of motivation for murder.’

  Garfield inclined his head in acknowledgement.

  ‘Next, Procter didn’t say Tommy was with him. In fact he was quite clear that he’d seen Goldie leaving on his own on previous occasions, so the implication was clear that he was alone this time—’ he raised a hand slightly to stall Garfield’s counter-argument ‘—but you have a point. We’ll be sure to clarify in any follow-up interview.

  ‘Look, if Annabelle Creasy was lying about Tommy leaving her house that morning, then we have to ask ourselves why? She could be trying to hide her affair with Goldie from everyone else. Jimmy Meegan is unlikely to take kindly to finding out his brother was being cheated on, so I doubt Goldie Davenport would be happy about his bed-hopping becoming public knowledge.’

  Garfield still didn’t look convinced. After a few moments silence he spoke up,

  ‘The thing is, I could understand Tommy Meegan killing Goldie. He finds out his mate is shagging his girl, so he kills him in a fit of jealous rage. I could even imagine the two of them getting into a fight and Goldie killing Tommy by accident. That would make sense. But from what I’ve heard of the crime scene, it doesn’t support that sort of confrontation. You’re the expert, what do you think?’

  Warren pursed his lips. ‘It’s impossible to say. He had bruises consistent with a fight, but he probably picked them up from the riot. The alleyway was bit of a bloodbath as you can imagine and I’ve not seen anything consistent with a prolonged struggle, but then nothing rules it out either. I’ll let the CSIs process it fully before I draw a firm conclusion.’

  ‘So unlikely to be Goldie then,’ Garfield concluded.

  Warren shook his head at his colleague’s hastily drawn conclusion. He’d forgotten that Garfield wasn’t CID; his expertise lay in intelligence gathering, whilst interpreting crime scenes and discerning motives was Warren’s bread and butter. He wondered how long it had been since Garfield had flexed those intellectual muscles. He’d have to remember that in future.

  ‘It didn’t have to be a hot-blooded fit of jealousy. In fact, I’d argue it almost certainly wasn’t; those sorts of murders tend to be solved pretty quickly. I’d say a degree of planning and preparation went into this. If Davenport was the killer, I think it’s more likely he wanted to get rid of his love rival and live happily ever after with the lovely Ms Creasy. Not to mention, where would he get a Kirpan? I doubt he had one lying around.’

  ‘From everything you’ve told me and what I’ve read about her it seems a bit far-fetched. Some tart the colour of a parking cone with a kid whose old man keeps
on trying to get custody; hardly worth the fight, if you ask me.’

  Warren bit his tongue; no matter what Garfield thought of the woman and her beliefs and associations – not to mention his own unpleasant experiences in the past – as far as he was concerned, she was grieving and deserving of at least some respect. Had Garfield been in his direct chain of command, he’d have pulled the car over and called him to task over his attitude.

  Garfield appeared oblivious to the effect his words were having on his colleague.

  ‘A far-right love triangle. I suppose you could call it a far-right-angled triangle.’

  Warren winced. Nevertheless it had reminded him of something that Annabelle Creasy had said.

  ‘It could be more of a love square than a love triangle.’

  Garfield raised an eyebrow.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Regardless of whether Tommy Meegan departed from Annabelle Creasy’s house Saturday morning, she wasn’t expecting him to return that night. She said that he was going to stay the night with his mother in Middlesbury.’

  ‘So? Makes sense; kill two birds with one stone.’

  ‘Well, not from what we’ve heard. Mary Meegan said she had been surprised by the appearance of Jimmy at her door that night. She knew they were in town but wasn’t expecting them to drop by; in fact, I got the impression that she rarely saw them these days.’

  Garfield thought for a moment.

  ‘So if he wasn’t staying at his mum’s, where was he planning on staying? Was he going to stay in Middlesbury and come back on the train like Annabelle Creasy said, or was he going to come back here on the coach and then go somewhere else?’