The Common Enemy

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘Yeah, I’m starting to get that feeling.’

  Sawjani forced a smile. ‘Well as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing us a favour, Warren. If you can lock up some of these BAP idiots for a few months, I will personally buy you and all of your team a drink. If nothing else, I’ll be able to redeploy some of the Neighbourhood Policing Team elsewhere for a bit. Anything you need, just call me.’

  Thanking Sawjani for the hospitality, he shook her hand again before leaving her office. Spying Hastings at the far end of the open-plan office, chatting to a group of fully kitted uniformed officers, he made his way over.

  ‘Come on, Constable, our date’s waiting downstairs.’

  ‘Sure thing, boss.’

  ‘And stop playing with that Taser before you electrocute someone.’

  * * *

  ‘You are aware that you are not under arrest and that you are free to leave any time?’

  Harry ‘Bellies’ Brandon was doing his best to appear nonchalant as Warren placed the legal niceties on record.

  ‘We’re just trying to pin down some missing details from Saturday the nineteenth of July. According to your statement, you were one of the last to arrive at The Feathers pub?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Roughly what time was that?’

  Brandon shrugged, the ubiquitous England flag above his left breast jiggling.

  ‘Dunno, I don’t wear a watch.’

  Warren scanned the man’s pudgy wrists; sure enough, the slightly tanned skin bore no traces of him sporting a watchstrap either currently or in the recent past.

  ‘Remind me again why you were so late.’

  ‘I didn’t know how to get to The Feathers, so I waited in a beer garden to ask for directions.’

  ‘And you can’t tell me how long you were there for?’

  ‘No.’

  Warren could see the man was getting irritated. He made a show of looking over his notes.

  ‘We’re trying to work out who might have threatened Tommy in the weeks and months before last weekend’s events. Now you said that you lived with him recently. Can you tell me if you saw anything suspicious? Did he mention anything worrying him?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Unexpected phone calls that upset him, online threats? Did his demeanour change at all?’

  Brandon’s brow furrowed.

  ‘I was only with him for a few weeks, but I didn’t see anything.’ He paused. ‘There was some shit posted online on the Facebook page and he blocked a couple of trolls on Twitter, but nothing unusual.’

  He paused. ‘No wait. He did get the hump one night about something. We were watching telly and he got an email on his phone. He got really angry. I asked him what the problem was and he got really pissy and told me to mind my own business. Then he went in his room for about an hour before storming off somewhere. He didn’t come home that night.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea what it was about, or who had upset him?’

  ‘No. But it usually took a lot to get him that annoyed. I figured it was probably his missus.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t come home. He had to stay somewhere, didn’t he? They probably made up and he stayed the night.’

  ‘And did you and Tommy ever argue?’

  ‘Nah, he was a good bloke. He was a bit of a slob, but he was letting me stay for free and listening to me whinge, so I couldn’t really complain.’

  ‘So aside from you, did he have many other guests?’

  ‘Not really. Goldie came over once or twice to watch the footie, but we usually went to the pub. He wasn’t really the entertaining type.’

  ‘What about his girlfriend? Did she stay over?’

  ‘Annie?’ He gave a short bark. ‘Are you kidding? You’ve seen the state of his room, she might not be the classiest of birds but even she has standards.’

  ‘So he used to stay around there then?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How often would you say he stayed? Was it a regular thing?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know, I’m not his mum.’

  ‘Fair enough, we’re just trying to establish his usual patterns.’

  ‘I guess he used to go around a couple of nights a week. It depended if she had her kid over or not.’

  And there was nobody else?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Was it possible Tommy was seeing somebody else. As well as Ms Creasy.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  Warren tried to read the man in front of him. Was he truly ignorant of his friend’s betrayal? Had he suspected that something was going on and decided to mind his own business? Perhaps it had been an open secret? Or perhaps Bellies Brandon had known full well that his friend and confidant had been seeing his estranged wife behind his back and had hatched a plot to kill him in revenge? Warren needed to know.

  ‘We have evidence to suggest that he may have been having an affair with somebody else as well as Ms Creasy.’

  Brandon let out a puff of air. ‘Dirty bugger.’

  Brandon’s tone was neutral.

  ‘Did you have any suspicions?’

  Brandon paused for a moment.

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Yeah, I figured something might be going on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sometimes the phone would ring in the evening. He’d always answer it with “Hello, Annie”, but then he’d be like a bloody teenager and disappear into his bedroom for an hour. Other nights he’d announce he was off to ring her and go to his room. I’m not being funny, but him and Annie had been together for years. What the hell did they still have to talk about?’

  ‘And do you have any idea who it might have been?’

  Brandon shrugged. ‘None of my business who he’s shagging.’

  Warren looked at him carefully.

  ‘What if it was somebody you knew?’

  The room was so quiet that Warren fancied he could hear the whir of the twin cassettes in the PACE recorder. Two red dots had appeared on Brandon’s cheeks.

  ‘Who?’

  * * *

  Warren took a long, steadying sip of his coffee and winced as his battered left shoulder protested. He’d only finished his latest round of physiotherapy on the abused socket a year ago and he hoped he’d not done anything too serious.

  ‘If he’s released after all of this, you’re going to need to either persuade Paige Brandon to move away from the area or get your Domestic Violence Unit involved,’ said Warren to a concerned-looking Chief Superintendent Sawjani.

  It was unclear if the volcanic explosion from Brandon had been consciously directed towards Warren or whether he was just in the way. Regardless, by the time three custody officers had burst in and managed to subdue the raging man mountain, the PACE recorder would never be used again and they were going to need new chairs.

  ‘I should have let you bring that Taser in with you,’ Warren joked weakly.

  ‘Do you think he did it?’ Hastings looked a little pale. He’d managed to avoid Brandon’s colossal temper tantrum and had dragged a stunned Warren to the corner of the room as the man rampaged around the suite, screaming incoherently.

  ‘Well, he’s certainly capable of murdering someone,’ said Warren, ‘but is he capable of biding his time long enough to set up something as elaborate as Tommy Meegan’s murder? He doesn’t look like a man in control of his impulses to me. And where the hell did he get that Kirpan from?’

  Chapter 48

  As Brandon was cooling his heels in a police cell, facing charges of assault, a search of the depressingly small, one-room studio flat he’d occupied since he’d given up Tommy Meegan’s sofa bed was executed. It hadn’t taken the scenes of crime team on loan from the Met long to perform. Most of the man’s belongings were still at the house he’d shared with his wife. It was a fair bet that trace evidence from Tommy Meegan would be all over the flat; what they wanted was a smoking gun.

  The head of the s
earch team called Warren at home that evening, where he was recovering from a shoulder massage. Was it his imagination, or had Susan’s ministrations been a little more forceful than usual? She’d certainly not been happy when he’d returned home battered and dishevelled.

  ‘A shirt we found in the laundry hamper matches the description of the one he was wearing the day of the killing.’ An accompanying photo sent to his email showed a large white football shirt held aloft by another white-suited technician. ‘There were small traces of what could be blood on the sleeve. We’ve bagged it and sent it by courier to Welwyn for your own team to process, along with the rest of the hamper.’

  Warren thanked her, but the recent debacle over the rust on Binay Singh Mahal’s trousers meant he wouldn’t be happy until somebody had confirmed it was actually blood, ideally with the owner’s DNA profile attached.

  ‘There wasn’t much blood,’ noted Hastings when Warren called him. ‘From the autopsy and CSI reports the killer should be covered in the stuff, assuming he didn’t cover himself in protective gear first.’

  ‘Protective gear that we have yet to find,’ said Warren. ‘Mind you, the spots could be secondary transfer, in which case if it matches Tommy Meegan, his lawyers will have fun explaining it away.’

  * * *

  At Susan’s insistence, Warren had stopped reading his email, enjoyed a hot bath and taken some ibuprofen. However, he’d been unable to resist turning on the late-night news to see what was happening in Middlesbury before retiring for the night. To his relief, it was now only third on the news agenda behind the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. The arrival of some more influential and experienced imams at the Friday prayer sessions had quelled some of the tempers and strategic policing had pre-emptively removed a few known troublemakers from the mix. So far, it had been a noisy but peaceable evening.

  The rattling of Warren’s phone against the arm of the sofa disturbed the mood.

  Sutton.

  Warren swiped to receive the call.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Chief, but I knew you’d want to know.’

  Warren’s stomach tightened.

  ‘Imam Mehmud just called. His grandmother Mrs Fahmida, the old lady injured in the fire, just died. The arson has just been upgraded to homicide.’

  Saturday 26th July

  Chapter 49

  Saturday marked the end of the first week since the murder of Tommy Meegan and the arson at the community centre. It also marked the two-week anniversary of Warren’s last full day off. At Warren’s insistence, Susan had agreed to meet her father to discuss how they were going to persuade her mother to be more supportive of the couple’s decision.

  If ever there was a time that Warren should be by his wife’s side, it was now. Unfortunately, it was out of the question. The death of Syeda Fahmida had hit social media within hours of Sutton’s phone call, and by the time Warren had given up on sleep and left for the office, there were already reports that protest marches were planned for the following day.

  The ongoing vigil outside the Islamic Centre had swelled significantly in number overnight and there had been several tense confrontations between the police and attendees. So far, nobody had been arrested and no officer had felt threatened enough to take out their baton, but Warren worried that it was only a matter of time before somebody provoked a conflict, either through frustration, or deliberately. Imam Mehmud had arrived briefly to lay flowers and thank those present for their support but had left quickly when it became apparent that his grandmother’s death was becoming politicised. Warren felt sorry for the young preacher, who had been thrown into the centre of such a storm.

  Pulling into the car park, Warren noticed that some early riser had spray painted ‘fascist pigs’ on the main gates to the police station; a reminder that not everyone was supportive of the police’s actions.

  ‘We’ve finally got the call log from the phone found on Tommy Meegan’s body.’ Gary Hastings slid the paper across Warren’s desk. ‘Sorry it took so long, but it was a pay-as-you-go from some little start-up company run out of a bloody garden shed.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘Hard to say. It’s only been used a few times over the two years that he owned it. Or that we presume he owned it,’ Hastings corrected himself. ‘The phone is left switched on, but never moves from the same location for months on end – I looked it up on Google Earth and it corresponds to his flat. When it does move, it’s the same days that the phone is used. There tends to be a flurry of short duration calls or texts over the course of a few hours then nothing.’

  ‘Which suggests that it’s an unregistered phone he used when he was doing things he probably shouldn’t, with little in the way of incriminating evidence if we got hold of it. Check with Garfield and see if the dates and locations coincide with known BAP activities. Now explain the spring in your step and the fluorescent yellow highlighter on some of the entries.’

  Hastings grinned. ‘This is where it gets interesting. Most of the calls are from other unregistered mobile numbers. I’m guessing that if we confiscated all the rest of his friends’ phones we’d probably account for them. But one stands out.’ He turned the sheet around.

  It took Warren a second to see what he meant, two highlighted calls – approximately a week apart. ‘That’s a Middlesbury area code.’

  ‘Yep. Better than that, it’s a payphone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The shops opposite the Chequers estate.’

  * * *

  The row of shops opposite the Chequers estate were the very definition of a ‘food desert’. Consisting of a fried chicken takeaway, a tanning salon, and three betting shops, the only business selling anything approaching nutritious food was a Costcutter – and even that sold more brands of pork scratchings than varieties of fresh fruit and vegetables. Exactly how people without a car or the means to travel the mile or so to Tesco were supposed to have anything approaching a balanced diet was unclear.

  The proprietor of the Costcutter simply turned his lip up and sneered when Warren and Hastings requested access to the only surveillance cameras in the vicinity of the badly vandalised phone boxes outside.

  Hastings cocked a head towards a group of teenagers smoking and drinking on the wall outside. Either they hadn’t realised that the two men were police officers or – more likely – they didn’t care.

  ‘They don’t look eighteen.’

  The shopkeeper shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Really? So where did they get the fags and the booze?’

  ‘Beats me.’

  ‘Because as far as I can tell, you’re the only person around here selling tobacco and alcohol.’

  ‘So? You can’t prove anything. Ask them.’

  ‘If I want to prove anything, I can just take a look at your CCTV. I’d say there’s reasonable grounds to seize the videotape, wouldn’t you, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  The shopkeeper blanched. The cameras were positioned to show who came in and out of the store, and what they were carrying. There was probably enough evidence on the tapes to earn him a massive fine at the least and maybe even close his business.

  Hastings let the thought sink in a little.

  ‘We aren’t here about your lax ID checking. We just want a look at your CCTV footage.’

  From that moment, the shopkeeper couldn’t have been more obliging.

  ‘Nice work, Constable,’ whispered Warren as the little man led them out the back. Hastings just hoped he could impress the interview panel at his promotion board as easily as he’d impressed DCI Jones.

  * * *

  The video from the shop was grainy and the angle was wrong, the camera designed to deter shoplifters or vandals hanging around outside. The very edge of the telephone box was just in shot, but maddeningly, it was impossible to see who was inside making a call.

  ‘Let’s hope that whoever used the box walked up the high street, rather than down,’ s
aid Hastings as he fiddled with the security system’s remote control. The thick layer of dust and grime covering the small black and white monitor suggested it had been set up to keep the shop’s insurance provider happy and then forgotten about. Unfortunately, the shop only stored the previous six weeks before automatically writing over the disc with new footage. Nevertheless, videos of the last call from the phone box should still be available on the system.

  The time stamp in the corner of the screen was jumping upwards towards 18.26 almost too quickly to read. Every so often a person would flicker into shot and back out. An old lady with a wheeled shopping cart walked across the screen at the speed of an Olympic sprinter. A cyclist blasted through in the blink of an eye.

  Five minutes from the time the call was made Hastings slowed the speed to eight times, then normal speed. Thirty-seven seconds before the call was started a figure ambled into shot. Head down, a hoodie hiding any features, the unknown individual crossed the camera’s field of view, before lifting an arm to grab the door handle.

  Warren’s breath caught in this throat as the target glanced towards the camera, their face clearly visible for just a fraction of a second. It was enough.

  ‘Why the hell are they calling Tommy Meegan?’

  Chapter 50

  ‘I have a list of Binay Singh Mahal’s internet browsing history and activity on his social media profiles,’ said Garfield, his voice echoing over the speakerphone.

  ‘Give me the highlights,’ instructed Warren. A caffeine headache had settled over his right eye socket.

  ‘It seems that Mr Singh led something of a double, indeed triple, life.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘His laptop has three user accounts, one for his day-to-day activity and two others for his rather less savoury online personas. They have separate social media profiles, email and web-browsing. It seems that he’s very careful to ensure that the three don’t overlap.’