A Cold Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘I have visited her neighbours,’ Mundy explained. ‘As you say, a very nice property, but I really was curious as to the whereabouts of the Derbyshire house.’

  ‘Silkstream Avenue,’ Greenall repeated. ‘Council property, as I said. It would take about half an hour to walk between the two houses, especially if you took the back road up Deans Lane and down Deans Way. So what are you going to do now, Mr Mundy? Where do you go from here?’

  ‘I have an appointment with the officer who led the investigation … one Mr Spate.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember him,’ Greenall replied sourly. ‘Do I remember him. It was in fact his attitude which convinced me that the police were determined to have Joshua convicted. Very zealous – overzealous, I thought. A man of closed-minded determination to ensure Joshua’s conviction. You ought to be careful if you are interviewing him and the issue of planted evidence has been raised. Tread carefully, Mr Mundy. Tread very, very carefully.’

  ‘I will,’ Mundy breathed deeply, ‘I will. I will be completely discreet, as you suggest. Fully discreet. In fact, I met his son this morning and he put me well on edge. His son is now a police officer with the Met, you see.’

  Greenall paused. ‘They could make things difficult for you,’ he said quietly. ‘Very difficult, if not dangerous.’

  ‘I know. He took the opportunity to let me know that he knows where I live,’ Mundy replied, equally softly. ‘Like I said, I was well on edge.’

  ‘Oh …’ Greenall groaned. ‘Do you think you need protection?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Mundy placed his hand up to his mouth. ‘I have not played my hand yet, largely because I have no hand to play … yet.’

  ‘If they have something to hide they won’t wait for you to play your hand – they’ll make a pre-emptive strike,’ Greenall cautioned. ‘You’ll disappear, or your body will be found – something like that.’

  ‘That hadn’t occurred to me,’ Mundy glanced to his left, ‘and me a lifelong copper. That had just not occurred to me.’

  ‘Well, if it’s any use, I will remember this conversation,’ Greenall offered, ‘and if I read of your disappearance or death, I will contact the anti-corruption people at Scotland Yard. What is the department called?’

  ‘A10,’ Mundy replied. ‘It’s called A10. Thank you. I would appreciate that.’

  ‘A10,’ Greenall repeated. ‘I can remember that. And what you should also do is write your suspicions down and post them to me, here, at this office. If something does happen to you I’ll post it on to A10. We can’t be too careful.’

  ‘As you say,’ Mundy replied quietly. ‘I suddenly feel that I am getting into deep water.’

  ‘And it’s full of crocodiles,’ Greenall added. ‘Just be careful and keep your cards close to your chest, Mr Mundy. Very close. It might be best if you act the bumbling idiot. That will encourage them to underestimate you … make things a little safer for you.’

  ‘Yes. Yes … I’ll do that.’ Mundy looked out of the window behind Greenall at the rain which by then was falling steadily. ‘The bumbling idiot, but not too far from the truth, idiot that I am,’ he mumbled. ‘Idiot, indeed.’

  ‘Did Josh or his family ever mention a young woman called Chisholm?’ Greenall asked quite suddenly. ‘Geraldine Chisholm?’

  ‘No.’ Mundy shook his head slowly. ‘I have never heard that name. Why? Who is she?’

  Greenall reached into his desk drawer and extracted a small card index file. ‘I still have her number here …’ He began to sift through the cards.

  ‘Who is she?’ Mundy repeated.

  ‘A journalist,’ Greenall explained. ‘Sorry, she’s a reporter. A young, enthusiastic crusader. Well, she was back then. Nothing as grand as Fleet Street but she too wasn’t at all happy with Joshua’s conviction. She made enquiries and was hoping for an exposé which would launch her career as an investigative reporter but she must … Yes, here it is. Yes, she must have come up against a brick wall … or she might have met a dead end because nothing was written. Nothing was ever published anyway. Have you got a notepad there? This is her number. She might be worth a visit. It might be worth picking her brains. Just a thought … you know. Just a suggestion.’

  The two men stood and shook hands. Strangely, Mundy thought, Greenall held on to his hand at the moment Mundy expected it to be relinquished. ‘You know, Maurice – you don’t mind if I call you Maurice?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Mundy replied with a note of curiosity in his voice. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘The Cold Case Review Team – I have come across that team before. Your days of mainstream police work are behind you … retirement beckons.’ Greenall then released Mundy’s hand.

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy became curious. ‘Yes, it beckons.’

  ‘Well, I ask because I have need of a private investigator. It won’t be anything glamorous,’ Greenall explained. ‘You won’t be in my employment – not officially but not illegally either. I’ll pay cash in hand … a reasonable rate, plus expenses. Just checking the validity of evidence, that sort of thing. If the police say they have a witness who saw the assault take place at the bus stop when he was putting out his empty milk bottles on his front door step, then you would, for example, take a trip out there and verify that the bus stop and the witness’s front door are intervisible. If the police say that my client perpetrated a crime at a certain time and place but independent witnesses or CCTV put my client at a different place about an hour earlier, for example, you would travel between the two locations and verify that the journey can be done within that time frame. It’s not glamorous, as I say, and you’ll be working for the defence rather than the Crown Prosecution Service. But you will be working in the interests of justice and you seem to me to be like the sort of man who values fair play.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Mundy held eye contact with Greenall. ‘I will give your offer real consideration. Real consideration.’

  ‘Please do, Maurice.’ Greenall also held eye contact with Mundy. ‘You have my phone number.’

  ‘I feel uplifted, so uplifted,’ Maurice Mundy commented as he and Janet Thackery walked away from the church and down towards Trafalgar Square. As they walked their shoulders occasionally brushed against each other’s. ‘Lunchtime recitals of Baroque music … I am so pleased you suggested it. Search as I might, I couldn’t find anything which seemed suitable … thank you.’

  ‘It’s not always Baroque,’ Janet Thackery replied, ‘but there is a recital there at that church each weekday.’

  ‘I will remember that.’ Mundy glanced up at the sky. It was still mostly grey but with occasional patches of blue making an appearance, and the rain had stopped. Life-giving as it may be in Thomas Greenall’s view, Mundy couldn’t help feeling thankful that the rain had stopped.

  ‘Do you have time for lunch?’ Janet Thackery looked at her watch. ‘It’ll be a late lunch but it would be nice to get off these greasy pavements.’

  ‘Yes, let’s do that.’ Mundy also glanced at his watch. ‘I have to be in Wimbledon for six p.m. but yes, I have time for lunch.’

  In a small café behind St Martin-in-the-Fields, Janet Thackery asked over her quiche, ‘So tell me, Maurice … if you can. I have no right to know but I am curious. In fact, I am burning up with curiosity … Can you tell me what it was that you and George quarrelled about?’

  ‘Yes, I can tell you, and it’s good of George that he didn’t tell you … good man that he was, but we didn’t quarrel at all. You have a right to know the story.’ Maurice ate a mouthful of his spaghetti Bolognese before continuing. ‘It was during the investigation into one Tracy Black.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Janet Thackery asked. ‘Female villains are very rare.’

  ‘Was … and it was he,’ Mundy explained. ‘She’s a he.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Janet Thackery put her fork down on her plate. ‘Was he a transvestite?’

  ‘No. He was all male, one hundred per cent testosterone. He was a real East London street turk. The story
apparently was that his father, in some twisted version of child psychology, gave him a girl’s name so the children at school would tease him and he would have to learn to stick up for himself. He’d have to learn how to handle himself in a skirmish and he did that all right – he became a gangster with a chip on his shoulder. Tracy could easily have called himself by a boy’s name – you know, changed his name once he was an adult – but he didn’t out of some odd sense of loyalty to his old man.’

  ‘George never mentioned him,’ Janet Thackery replied, ‘but he never mentioned any of his work. He left it all at the Yard.’

  ‘That was very caring of him.’ Mundy toyed with his food. ‘I have known marriages fail because police officers come home and dump on their wives, emotionally speaking, making their wives carry the stress of their job. That sort of number. Very unfair of them.’

  ‘Yes, I have also heard of that.’ Janet Thackery glanced out of the window of the café. ‘But George never did that – never.’

  ‘Good for him.’ Mundy forked food into his mouth. ‘But Tracy Black, he became a crime lord. He grew through the ranks of East London gangsterism and established his own empire.’

  ‘I never heard the name,’ Janet Thackery repeated.

  ‘No one ever has – no one outside the police, that is,’ Mundy explained. ‘He was never convicted, ever … not of anything. He was the exception to the rule that you don’t get accepted in gangland unless you’ve got some prison time under your belt. Tracy Black never even attracted so much as a parking ticket – he was Mr Clean. He was also Mr Downright Evil, but in terms of his record he was Mr Squeaky Clean.’

  ‘Really?’ Janet Thackery picked at her meal. ‘So he was quite a big fish?’

  ‘Oh, yes. One to hook and bring into the keep net.’ Mundy glanced casually at two middle-aged women who came to sit at the adjacent table; they each carried bulging shopping bags and began to talk to each other in a foreign language. German, he thought, or possibly Dutch. He turned again to Janet Thackery. ‘Tracy Black … well, he … he was into everything: hard drugs, people smuggling, extortion, money laundering, contract murder … you name it, his paw prints would be on it. He had his snout in every unlawful trough there was, and the more money there was to be made then his snout was in all the deeper.’

  ‘I get the picture.’ Janet Thackery also looked at the two female overseas visitors. She then turned her attention back to Maurice Mundy.

  ‘Yes,’ Mundy continued, ‘the police wanted him badly and we were building up a case against him for the murder of a low-life called “Micky the Grass” Hopper.’

  ‘Grass Hopper.’ Janet Thackery smiled. ‘The names they call each other.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy returned the smile. ‘Michael “Micky the Grass” Hopper got his nickname not only because of his surname but also and mainly because he was an informant. He was a grass. He’d grassed somebody up to save his own skin.’

  ‘Oh,’ Janet Thackery groaned, ‘not a clever thing to do. Very public spirited, but if you are a member of the underworld that is seen as a form of treason, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ Mundy nodded gently. ‘It’s treasonable in terms of gangland values, and according to their code to grass on someone is a term of high treason. And once a grass always a grass. Over the years Micky Hopper grassed up quite a few people. Eventually Tracy Black realized he had a grass in his outfit, found out who it was and ordered him to be iced. He was iced, quite horribly. I won’t go into details …’

  ‘Thank you.’ Janet Thackery grinned. ‘Especially over lunch.’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, the investigation was kept at a low key … a need-to-know basis only because information travels in both directions and it was believed that Tracy Black had a few police officers in his pocket.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Janet Thackery looked alarmed. ‘That is bad.’

  ‘Yes. It continually seemed that he was always one step ahead of any investigation, as though a police officer was making a phone call from a public call box to an agreed number and tipping him off.’ Mundy finished his meal and placed his fork centrally in the oval plate. ‘Hence the importance of keeping the Hopper investigation very hush hush, and George and I were posted to it.’

  ‘They must have thought highly of both of you.’ Janet Thackery beamed at Mundy.

  ‘It would be nice to think that that was the case,’ Mundy wiped his mouth with the napkin, ‘but the truth was that we had served our time as “woodentops” and had recently joined the plainclothes boys, so were both thought unlikely to be corrupt. We were known not to be in anyone’s pocket.’

  ‘Oh … well, but at least you were in the CID,’ Janet Thackery said warmly. ‘It was promotion – a step up the ladder.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mundy nodded. ‘Anyway, the investigation was proceeding well and we were closing down very nicely on Tracy Black. The case was building well and … and …’ Mundy glanced out of the window of the café. ‘Sorry, this is difficult, but …’

  ‘In your own time,’ Janet Thackery replied. ‘And remember, you don’t have to …’

  ‘No, I do have to … I want you to know. Well … in a nutshell …’ Mundy forced the words, ‘… in a nutshell I blew the whole investigation.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Janet Thackery groaned. ‘I am so sorry, Maurice.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m afraid so. I brought Tracy Black in for questioning about the Micky Grass Hopper murder, and interestingly enough that was the one and only time Tracy Black had been inside a police station so I scored a certain point there, but, of course, it only served to tip him off that we were closing in on him. Alibis were arranged and potential witnesses disappeared …’

  ‘So you feel that you have blood on your hands?’ Janet Thackery offered in a sympathetic voice. ‘Not comfortable for you.’

  ‘Yes … and you know I think that that is the real issue.’ Mundy looked at his empty plate. ‘They might have been felons but they still had a right to life. For the police, for the top floor, though, the issue ruined the whole investigation. Anyway, Tracy Black lived out his life living in luxury in a huge villa in Spain, surrounded by ex-dancing girls who dutifully attended to his every need, and he died peacefully in his sleep when he was in his seventies.’ Maurice Mundy paused. ‘The top floor were baying for my blood and wanted me back in uniform helping old ladies across the road, but the Police Federation stepped in and helped me fight my corner. At the disciplinary hearing they argued that I had acted in an overeager manner and that I was an inexperienced young officer who should have been more closely supervised, and by doing that the Police Federation managed to spread the responsibility. They managed to shift some of the blame on to the senior officers in the investigation. Anyway … the upshot was that I received an official reprimand which was to remain on my file for five years.’

  ‘Ouch.’ Janet Thackery grimaced. ‘But you acted with all good intentions.’

  ‘I know, I know, but to continue … I was taking the lift after the disciplinary hearing and a member of the disciplinary panel stepped into the lift with me. On the way down he explained to me that the decision of the hearing was really an invitation for me to resign. He told me that my cards had been well and truly marked and that if I wanted to do something with my life I should leave the police and become a probation officer or some such occupation. But if I stayed, I’d retire as a detective constable.’

  ‘But you stayed in,’ Janet Thackery observed.

  ‘Yes, it was all I could do, all I ever wanted to do,’ Mundy explained. ‘I left home at sixteen to join the army as an escape from a bit of a difficult family life. After two years as a boy soldier I joined the Royal Army Catering Corps. Can you credit it … I learned how to cook but live on pizzas from the supermarket.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll cook you a meal.’ Janet Thackery smiled broadly. ‘My cooking probably won’t impress an army chef but it sounds like you could use a bit of home cooking.’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that.’ Mundy raised
his head and smiled across the table at her. ‘And I’m hardly an army chef. I didn’t even do the sergeants’ mess cooking course. But I can boil potatoes in large quantities, so I’d like that, a bit of home cooking, yes. Thank you.’

  ‘OK, we’ll arrange a date for you to come and eat.’ Janet Thackery smiled warmly.

  ‘Thank you, but after two years in the Catering Corps I transferred to the Military Police. I didn’t get into the Special Investigation Branch – I dare say that I wasn’t good enough – and spent my time arresting drunken squaddies, but I developed a taste for police work. I left the army with an exemplary service record and an honourable discharge and joined the Metropolitan Police. I met your late husband and my good friend at the police training college. But …’ Mundy paused, ‘… because of my little error of judgement, I remained a bottom feeder and George steadily rose, so that’s the story. George and I never quarrelled but I became persona non grata … a failure … and if you want to rise you must never associate with a failure. Because of that George could not afford to be seen sitting with me in the canteen. Keep your desktop neat and tidy and be very careful who you are seen with, if you want to rise … that’s the rule. It’s the golden rule.’

  ‘I see. I’m sorry.’ Janet Thackery looked away from Mundy. ‘I feel awkward. George should not have rejected you like that. I am surprised to hear that of him. I feel a bit disappointed in him as well.’

  ‘I was not offended. We still saw each other when we were off duty and I was made welcome in your home, but at work … at work …’ Mundy spoke softly. ‘At work he had a game to play and he played it well. He rose quite rapidly and I investigated the theft of lawnmowers from garden sheds.’

  ‘So is that why you joined the CCRT?’ Janet Thackery asked. ‘To investigate higher levels of crime?’

  ‘Partly,’ Mundy replied, ‘and partly because I can’t survive on a detective constable’s pension. I’m still paying off my mortgage, for one thing. A pensioner with a mortgage … how sad is that? How bad is that?’