The Common Enemy

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘I’ll find out.’ She was already turning back to her computer.

  * * *

  ‘I’ve been on to the DVLA about the fake licence plates.’ Hardwick had a printed email in her hand.

  ‘As you know, it’s quite difficult to get them made up, at least on the high street, you need the vehicle’s registration documents. That’s why thieves normally try and nick plates off other cars. In this case, they either wanted a quick fix, or didn’t fancy the risk.’

  She laid the printout down on the table in front of Warren.

  ‘The two index numbers, from the car that we believe picked up Philip Rhodri and the car that bought the petrol, only differ by two digits. Unfortunately, we don’t have high resolution photographs that can spot the tampering directly, but we can make a pretty good guess at what they did.’

  She pointed at the two numbers.

  ‘You can see how on this plate there are two letter Rs. However, on this one the remaining five characters are the same, but instead of two Rs we have two letter Bs.’

  ‘It’s been changed with black tape,’ said Warren.

  ‘Exactly. It probably wouldn’t pass close inspection by eye, but it’s good enough to fool ANPR cameras.’

  ‘Do we know what the original index is likely to have been?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘There are a few permutations, but the most likely candidate is two modified letter Ps, which leads us to this car, a white 1998 Vauxhall Corsa, owned by a sixty-seven-year-old Mr Mansfield in Bedford.’

  ‘Good work, Karen,’ praised Warren, ‘although I have my doubts that the registered keeper is our man. Do you have an address?’

  ‘Unless he’s moved since the last tax disc was issued back in December.’

  ‘Check it out.’

  * * *

  ‘Sir, Tommy Meegan’s mobile phone provider have given us the call log for his smartphone.’ Hastings was clutching a wad of A4 sheets. ‘I’m still waiting to hear back from the network that his ancient Nokia was registered to.’

  Warren looked up from his computer. ‘Any clue if he was playing away from home?’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  Hastings had marked almost a third of the entries with a fluorescent pink highlighter pen. A single number had been either called or sent text messages almost twice a day for the three months covered by the log.

  ‘The entries follow a pattern. A text first thing in the morning and either a text or a lengthy call each evening.’ Hastings looked a touch embarrassed. ‘It looks a lot like the pattern Karen and I followed when we were first dating.’

  ‘Ah, modern love. Back in my day, Susan and I had to rely on carrier pigeons. I assume the number isn’t that of his beloved Ms Creasy?’

  ‘Nope.’ He passed over another piece of paper, this time with the owners of the numbers listed. Again, he’d highlighted a number in pink.

  Warren whistled.

  ‘Well, that is interesting.’

  Chapter 43

  ‘Mr Mansfield died back in May. His widow sold the car through a private listing in a newspaper in mid-June.’ Hardwick sounded frustrated.

  ‘Why is it still registered to him?’ Warren made to perch on the edge of her desk, then reappraised the structural integrity of the cheap MDF and thought better of it.

  ‘She admits to being a bit overwhelmed by everything and not being a driver herself, didn’t really know what to do. She said that the man who bought it offered to fill in the paperwork for the transfer of ownership.’

  ‘So she met the man she sold it to. I suppose it would be a bit too much to hope for a name or bank details?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. She thinks his name was Richard. He paid her three hundred pounds cash and drove straight off. But she does have a description.’

  ‘Go on.’

  The frustration in her voice eased somewhat. ‘White, shaven-headed, wearing an England football shirt…’ she paused ‘… with full-length arm tattoos.’

  ‘Sounds familiar. Now we just need to figure out who this person is,’ said Warren.

  ‘Knock, knock.’ Theo Garfield rapped his knuckles against the wooden divider between Hardwick’s cubicle and the next. The grin that he wore threatened to split his face in two. Tony Sutton looked similarly pleased.

  ‘We may be able to help you. We’ve got a hit on the database.’ He waved a piece of paper in the air.

  ‘Shaven-headed with full-length arm tattoos is a surprisingly rare combination amongst our far-right friends. A properly done tattoo sleeve could easily cost a thousand pounds or more per arm, although given the designs they favour, I’d imagine they probably aren’t popping into the local high street parlour. Either way it’s a pretty hefty investment for most of these guys.’

  He passed the printout to Warren.

  ‘Mr Robert Lynton, fifty-two years old, Haverhill, Suffolk. He spent some time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for assault in the early Nineties. Not a lot since then, but he occasionally crops up at protest marches.’

  He passed across a colour photograph.

  ‘This was taken at a rally in 2012. It’s blurry, but you can see he has ink covering his right arm.’

  ‘The one raised in a Nazi salute?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a pleasant boy.’

  ‘Well, Haverhill is less than an hour’s drive away and on the opposite side of Middlesbury to the direction they will have been driving up from so it makes sense that he wasn’t on the coach,’ said Sutton.

  ‘It also makes sense that he’d be the one that knows Middlesbury well enough to be put in charge of torching the Islamic Centre. Any other evidence? Has he said anything on social media?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t look like he’s a big one for using the internet. Or at least we haven’t managed to link any of the accounts we monitor to him,’ said Garfield.

  ‘Do we have an address?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Yes, and council tax records show it to be current.’

  ‘Then why don’t you and Tony pay him a visit? Be sure to pass on my regards.’

  * * *

  The sort of man who would spray petrol through a letter box after blocking the exit with a metal bin was a coward and probably wouldn’t put up much resistance. Nevertheless, Sutton and Garfield were taking no chances, neither of them wanting to find themselves on the wrong end of a knife. Both men wore stab vests and a van full of similarly attired constables on loan from Suffolk Constabulary sat around the corner ready to respond to any trouble within sixty seconds.

  Robert Lynton lived in a well-maintained, semi-detached, four-bedroom house on the outskirts of the town. A white Mercedes soft top sat on the gravelled drive.

  ‘I’m sure Alois Kernaghan would have mentioned if the car that picked up Rhodri was a sports car,’ said Garfield. ‘But then I suppose it would be too much to hope for a Vauxhall Corsa with dodgy licence plates to be sitting in plain view.’

  Sutton looked around appreciatively at the neatly landscaped front garden. ‘This guy hardly conforms to the stereotype.’

  ‘Some don’t. They wear long sleeves in summer to cover their tattoos and keep their views to themselves in polite company. Plenty of men shave our heads these days, myself included. They travel away if they want to go on marches. They don’t shit in their own nest.’

  The doorbell, a melodious affair, also confounded Sutton’s expectations, as did the tastefully decorated hallway visible past the woman that opened the door to them.

  ‘Whaddya want?’ The woman’s harsh, gravelly tones contradicted her immaculately coiffured hair and meticulously applied make-up. At first glance her smooth, wrinkle-free complexion suggested a woman closer to thirty than fifty, however the way that her sneer seemed to stop halfway up her face hinted that her youthful appearance wasn’t entirely natural. A glance at her throat, visible above her plunging neckline, confirmed that her true age was probably closer to sixty than fifty.

  ‘Mrs Lynton?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

&n
bsp; ‘I’m Detective Inspector Tony Sutton, and this is my colleague.’ As usual, Garfield was keeping a low profile.

  ‘Is Mr Lynton in?’

  She smiled, her lips curling the part of her face that hadn’t been paralysed by Botox.

  ‘Of course he is.’

  ‘May we speak to him?’

  ‘Doubtful.’

  ‘We do have a warrant to enter these premises and speak to Mr Lynton, but we’d rather avoid any unnecessary unpleasantness.’

  She shrugged. ‘Knock yourself out.’

  Stepping to one side, she called out. ‘Rob, you’ve got visitors. Two lovely gentlemen from the police would like to speak to you.’

  She gave her half-smile again. ‘Go in. I won’t bother boiling the kettle.’

  * * *

  ‘Well, that was a waste of bloody time.’

  Sutton tried hard to keep the frustration out of his voice as he pulled away from the Lyntons’ house with a squeak of tyres.

  Garfield looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry, our database isn’t always as up-to-date as we’d like.’

  Sutton breathed out in a sharp hiss.

  ‘Not your fault. You weren’t to know the poor sod was in that state.’

  ‘Yeah, looks as though he can’t lift a spoon these days, let alone raise a Nazi salute.’

  According to his wife, Robert Lynton had suffered a massive stroke two years previously. They’d check out his story, but both men knew the lead was a dead end; you’d need to be an Oscar-winning actor to fake the man’s symptoms that convincingly.

  The two men lapsed into silence.

  ‘Karma, wouldn’t you say?’ said Garfield after a while. ‘The man was a nasty piece of work. I guess what goes around comes around.’

  Sutton said nothing. He wasn’t sure anybody deserved that.

  Chapter 44

  Sutton and Garfield were deflated when they returned to the station and Warren shared their concern. As did the Chief Constable, by all accounts.

  ‘We could have done with a bit of good news,’ muttered DSI Grayson. He’d turned his computer screen through one-hundred-and-eighty degrees so the gathered officers could see the BBC News he was streaming.

  Behind the same journalist from earlier that week, a crowd of fifty or so protestors had gathered, some with placards bearing the now ubiquitous #Justice4Muslims hashtag, whilst a dozen or so police in fluorescent green vests stood a watchful guard.

  ‘Imam Danyal Mehmud leads prayers at the Middlesbury Islamic Centre, which was subjected to an arson attack at the same time as the riots in the town centre. What can you tell me about the mood of the local Muslim community, particularly in the light of these recent attacks, both at the site of the fire and online?’

  The young imam was clearly nervous and Sutton looked on with sympathy. He’d grown to like the young man and had been on the phone with him that morning as he’d prepared for holiest day of the Muslim week.

  ‘Obviously we are still very shocked and saddened by Saturday’s events and we continue to pray for our sister and her great-grandson who remain in hospital. We are worried that there are plans for yet more far-right extremists to come to our town to mark the funeral of Tommy Meegan and after the despicable defacing of this community memorial, we urge the police and the authorities to do all they can to prevent future attacks on all of our communities.’

  To underscore his point, the image switched to one of the pile of flowers and soft toys that well-wishers had been leaving against the centre’s front gate since the weekend. Red paint had been splashed all over the makeshift memorial and crude swastikas sprayed on the wall behind. ‘Terrorists Out’ and ‘No Muslims in Middlesbury’ were the only two slogans that the BBC hadn’t blurred out for decency reasons.

  ‘The Social Media Intelligence Unit have reported the sudden registering of over one hundred Twitter and Facebook accounts in past twelve hours, all using the murder of Tommy Meegan to call for everything from the banning of the burqa to forced deportation and worse.’ Garfield was grim, reading an email on his phone. ‘The service providers are doing their best to shut them down as soon as they are reported, but these guys are damned sophisticated. IP addresses for those setting up the accounts are scattered across the continent and even the US, involving at least a dozen different groups. This level of online coordination is almost unprecedented. If they can carry it over into the real world, Tommy Meegan’s funeral could be an even bigger flashpoint than we feared.’

  Back on screen, the reporter turned her microphone towards the woman on her left. ‘Councillor Lavindeep Kaur is a prominent member of the local Sikh community and represents many of the ethnic minority residents in Middlesbury, including Muslims. What are your thoughts on what took place last Saturday and on more recent events?’

  Councillor Kaur had dressed for the cameras, her hair now covered in an elaborate red and gold headscarf and her trouser suit replaced with a flowing salwar kameez.

  ‘Well, first I should clarify that I represent all of the citizens of Middlesbury, not just members of our minority communities, and you can see from the crowds behind us that the events here have united people from across all faiths.’ The BBC correspondent acknowledged the rebuke with a nod of the head. ‘However, I join our Muslim brothers and sisters in praying for those still in hospital and I echo Imam Mehmud’s call for action from the authorities ahead of the funeral of Mr Meegan. We must ensure that our peaceful town is not overrun again by the nasty, racist individuals who perpetrated this cowardly act.’

  To her credit, the reporter didn’t let the assertion go unchallenged.

  ‘As yet, the police have not been able to establish who was responsible for the arson attack on the Islamic Centre and the British Allegiance Party have denied all involvement.’

  Kaur assumed a grave expression, but Warren fancied he could almost feel the woman’s glee at the opportunity to address her favourite subject.

  ‘Well, so far the police have singularly failed to inspire confidence in many of the communities I represent. They have yet to announce any leads in their investigation, and after meeting with the Senior Investigating Officer, I get the impression that they seem to be far more interested in the killing of Mr Meegan. After all, it was their carelessness that led to Saturday’s fiasco in the first place and the criminal damage that took place last night.’

  Warren bit his tongue, as the reporter again challenged her sweeping comment. The veteran politician brushed her protests aside.

  ‘Look behind you. There are dozens of police officers policing a peaceful protest by our Muslim brothers and sisters, yet on the day that a coachload of Islamophobic thugs came to our town, hell-bent on trouble, Hertfordshire Constabulary saw fit to post only two officers in a car outside what was an obvious target for their hatred and violence. They then redeployed them in a failed attempt to shore-up their under-resourced response to the riot threatening to wreak havoc on our town centre. After Saturday’s attack, they again turned out in force to police those individuals paying their respects. Then, suddenly, last night withdrew all officers from here, allowing this disgraceful vandalism to take place. Their lack of planning and foresight calls into question the competence of those senior officers involved and their commitment to keeping the entire community safe.’

  Grayson inhaled sharply. ‘The hypocritical…’ He paused for a moment. ‘It was Councillor Kaur’s constant pressure on ACC Naseem that resulted in the withdrawal of a police presence yesterday evening. Now she’s trying to blame the cockup on us?’

  Unfortunately, the interviewer hadn’t picked up on the discrepancies in Kaur’s statement.

  ‘Are you saying that the police’s response, or rather lack of it, was responsible for the fire that took place here last weekend and the attack last night?’

  Kaur paused for a moment and Warren could almost see the political calculations taking place behind her eyes. When she resumed speaking her tone was more conciliatory.

  ‘What I
am saying, is that there needs to be a full, independent inquiry into what has happened over the past week and whether the dangers faced by minority communities are being taken seriously by the authorities, including the police. Furthermore, I call on the Home Secretary to consider using her powers to stop the funeral of Tommy Meegan becoming a flashpoint for yet more violence.’

  ‘What powers?’ exploded Grayson. ‘She can’t ban a funeral, for Christ’s sake!’

  The reporter turned back to Imam Mehmud. ‘Mr Mehmud, what are your final thoughts?’

  The young man looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I would echo the councillor’s calls for an inquiry, but in the meantime would urge our brothers and sisters to remember that Islam is a religion of peace and that we should refrain from taking the law into our own hands.’

  The journalist thanked both interviewees before handing back to the studio.

  Sutton was the first to speak. ‘Imam Mehmud is out of his depth, he said as much to me. He’s worried that things are going to turn ugly. They’re going to hold their Friday prayers in a church hall and he said that a lot of angry young men that he doesn’t recognise are arriving. He’s concerned that some are going to use it as an excuse for violence.’

  ‘Which plays into the hands of the BAP and their ilk,’ concluded Garfield.

  Warren agreed. ‘The slightest sniff of any trouble and the right-wing press will have a field day. All people will see on the front pages of the newspapers are angry Muslims protesting. And you just know the photos they use will be of the hardcore troublemakers carrying placards saying “Death to the West”. People like Danyal Mehmud won’t get a look-in.’

  ‘And whoever is policing the event is going to be under impossible scrutiny,’ said Sutton. ‘If they set a foot wrong, they’ll be out on their ear. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few wannabe martyrs looking to find themselves on the wrong side of a baton and the right side of a camera.’

  ‘Well, politics isn’t our concern,’ Grayson reminded them. ‘All we can do is get to the bottom of this and the killing of Tommy Meegan as quickly as possible and hope that the politicians and community leaders can mend fences and keep a lid on things.’ He grimaced. ‘What I will say is, I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of whoever ultimately carries the blame for Saturday’s cockup.’