Gant!

by Laurence Todd

  “I’ve been looking into this case. Well, not this actual case. I’ve been checking out Louis Phipps and his brother, trying to see what they could have gotten into to get someone to set Gant after them.”

  “You’re convinced it was Gant, aren’t you?”

  “What do you think? I see the guy outside the bar and he admits he’s after the Phippses. They leave the bar, they get shot by someone who’s clearly an expert marksman; two shots fired, one in the heart and one between the eyes. Both killed by someone with a trained eye. Gant, a top-notch killer, just happens to be nearby, and he also just happens to be a Special Forces trained marksman. He’s also a known assassin. Kills to order. Coincidence? I don’t buy it.”

  “It’s not a Branch matter just yet, Robert, so we can’t just go steaming in. It’s difficult to imagine any real security issues arising from killing the Phippses. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want unsolved murders around here any more than anyone else does, but we have to be circumspect about it. CID is investigating this matter. Let them handle it. Go back to your holiday, Rob.”

  He stood up. He gathered his papers and left the room. His recommendation I continue with my holiday was only a suggestion but, in his eyes, it had the force of a direct order. In circumstances like this there was only one thing to do to alleviate my frustration. Before catching the Tube home I stopped at the pub opposite St James’s Park station and had a few beers. Works every time. I felt better and continued reading my book well into the night.

  Whilst in the pub I saw a newspaper. The London Evening Standard led with the murders of two unnamed men the previous evening. The story said they’d been leaving a pub in Bayswater at closing time when a person or persons unknown ambushed them and shot both men dead. Happily there were no pictures of the crime scene or the bodies, though there was a picture of the street taken from the Kensington Gardens end. The paper carried brief details of the victims, which did not make either man sound like a candidate for sainthood in whatever church they worshipped, hinting at all manner of misdemeanours and brushes with the forces of Law and Order. Nothing was mentioned about the holding of hostages in the bar and it mentioned the police at the moment having no solid leads as to who the killer might be. I certainly knew who it was though I could not prove anything. I wondered if this was how their mother found out about the fate of her sons.

  T H R E E

  Wednesday

  The day before, looking through the PNC files on Louis Phipps, I’d made a note of his address and any known associates. A motley crowd indeed, the majority having had some contact with law enforcement during their upbringing, usually an arrest and court appearance, though none had committed what could be perceived as serious crime. They were all just like Phipps – killing time until they finally started lengthy prison sentences for having been dumb enough to have dreams of avarice but neither the means nor the brains to make them come true, or, as was the case with Louis and Paulie, avoid an early grave. The majority of the Phippses’ friends were late teens to early twenties and sensing their likely fate was depressing.

  As this wasn’t technically a case I was directly involved in, and certainly not a Special Branch one yet, Mickey agreed to come along and keep me company. The presence of two police officers usually suggested to the likes of Phipps’ boon companions that they meant business, just like when the bailiffs arrive.

  The brothers had lived in Brixton so we started there. I parked on the main road near to where the Phippses lived, on a road close to the Loughborough estate, not too far from the centre of Brixton. They were hard-to-let houses previously under local authority control but now run by a Housing Association. Their house was on Barrington Road and we soon found the number we were looking for. Walking along we were subjected to some threatening glances and suspicious stares from the mainly black youths who were either leaning against walls or just walking around giving a successful impression of having nothing to do and nowhere to do it. From the glares we elicited it was clear they knew we were police. There was a solitary black male, probably late twenties, standing on the corner constantly looking around. He looked across the road at us, looked to his left and shook his head slightly. Immediately a car started up and pulled away from the kerb.

  “What do you reckon, the lookout for street sales?” Mickey grinned.

  I shrugged.

  At Phipps’ house I rang the doorbell. Ten seconds later I rang it again. I heard the muffled sounds of someone shuffling down the corridor. The door opened and I saw a teenage girl, maybe sixteen, wearing a white baggy T-shirt with a faded print of Miss Piggy on the front and a pair of multi-coloured shorts. I wasn’t actually certain if the shirt was white as there were so many stains and it was faded in places. She wore nothing on her feet, which were very dirty.

  “Yeah, what you two want?” Her accent was coarse and she sounded raspy.

  “Always spot class, can’t you?” I heard Mickey whisper.

  “What you just say?” she said loudly.

  “He didn’t say anything,” I said as I showed her my ID card. “I’m DS McGraw, this is my colleague, Mr Corsley. I believe this is where Louis Phipps lives.” I tried to sound authoritative.

  “What if he does? He ain’t here if you’re looking for him, ain’t been here for a few nights and I don’t know where he is either.”

  “That’s true, and he may not be coming back tonight either as he’s somewhat indisposed,” Mickey said with a straight face. “We need to look at his flat.”

  “Why? What you wanna snoop around there for?”

  She was truly obnoxious, this kid. Just as well she wasn’t bright enough to ask if we had a search warrant. As she spoke a man walked along the corridor. He was around six foot and pencil thin. He had a wispy beard and dreadlocks reaching his chest. It was hard establishing if he was black or white as his skin was the colour of parchment. From the brownish hair colour I guessed white. Up close his eyes betrayed the fact he was a junkie. They were bloodshot and unfocused, with dilated pupils, and his face had the kind of acne that would have a teenage girl thinking about suicide.

  “Can I be of assistance, Officers?” He smirked. His voice sounded as if he had a throat infection.

  I identified myself again and repeated that I needed to look at Louis Phipps’ flat. He too didn’t mention asking to see a warrant. They didn’t seem to breed them too bright down this way.

  “Flat’s on the top floor, man, but, like, I don’t have the key.”

  “That’s no problem. Like, I have one, man,” Mickey replied facetiously. The man hadn’t spotted Mickey spoofing him or, if he did, he ignored it. Maybe he’d not understood it.

  “Okay, come in.”

  The man stepped aside and we entered.

  “There’s only one flat up there, it’s easy to find,” the man called out as we ascended the stairs.

  The two flights of stairs were an ordeal. Not in terms of height, in terms of hygiene. The whole place stank. There was a foul odour of sweat and unwashed bodies. There were cobwebs across the corners of the stairs and there were several tears in the wallpaper. The window on the first floor was covered in grime, making it difficult to see through. Graffiti covered one wall and someone had attempted a mural on the wall opposite. The floor was thick with dust, sufficient to leave a footprint. The place was a slum.

  We reached the second floor. There was only one door. “You got the key. Open it,” I said.

  Mickey nodded. He turned to his left, leapt forward and, with his right foot, kicked the door on the handle. It crashed open against the wall. The wood around the lock was rotted and we could have probably opened the door by sneezing against it.

  “This is technically illegal, isn’t it?” Mickey asked.

  “Very illegal,” I agreed.

  We entered the flat. There was a short corridor leading into a main living room. There was a small bathroom and toilet off to the left. There was a kitchen next to the toilet and, further into the room, another door
which led into a bedroom. The main room was around twenty feet square with a window opposite the kitchen door. In the corner of the room was a large flatscreen television set that looked brand new and top of the range. I wondered where Phipps had stolen it from.

  The flat was the mess I’d expected. There were empty beer cans on the kitchen table and piles of discarded fast food wrappers in a bin filled to overflowing. There was sufficient dust on the floor to qualify to be topsoil. The whole flat had a pervasive sense of gloom. I looked out the window in the front room. I could see the street but only just as it was as grimy as the window on the stairs. There were brown stains on the ceiling, suggesting that the room had seen a considerable amount of smoking over time.

  “Let’s just do this and get the fuck out,” Mickey said. I agreed.

  I searched the front room. I looked in all the cupboards, under the settee and everywhere that looked like it could store something. There was a wardrobe with a few jackets and shirts hanging up and I searched all the pockets but found only lint. There was a pile of DVDs on the shelf and the majority were pornographic. I opened a few cases to see what else might be there but found nothing except the actual DVD. I found a mug on the kitchen table that had enough mould on the bottom to justify calling it penicillin.

  I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. I was hoping to find something that stood out, something that someone like Louis Phipps wouldn’t usually be associated with but, whatever it was, I didn’t find it. All we found was a tip.

  Mickey had searched the bedroom. Under the beds there were piles of rubbish that had been simply swept out of sight. There was lots of dirty laundry and a couple of porno mags. The room was in the same state of squalor as the rest of the flat. Mickey looked through the bed sheets but there was nothing. The sheets were discoloured and looked like they’d not seen detergent for a very long time and, from the stains on them, whoever slept in this bed either had sex regularly or jerked off into the sheets. My money was on the latter.

  I looked in the bathroom, which was as unhygienic as any I’d ever seen. There was the tang of someone having thrown up recently and the sour smell not successfully dissipating. At least the toilet had been flushed but the bowl was a colour I didn’t recognise as hygienic. The cabinet contained just razors, some deodorant and a bottle of mouthwash. A couple of cockroaches scurried away under a crack in the pelmet.

  After twenty minutes the only thing we had to show for our efforts was nausea. Mickey opened the fridge and saw a few cans of beer. He took one and opened it.

  “I don’t think he’ll miss this. Cheers, Louis,” he toasted him and drank. The fridge contained several food items that, from the rancid smell, had easily exceeded their use-before date. I closed the fridge.

  Mickey drained the beer can, scrunched it up and tossed it on top of an already full wastepaper basket.

  I was dispirited. I’d been hoping to find something I could tie to Phipps and the idea he’d been involved in a blackmail scheme but nothing here suggested anything other than someone for whom housework was anathema. If cleanliness was indeed next to Godliness, the Phipps brothers were practising heathens.

  We went back downstairs. There was music coming from the kitchen so we headed there. The man was sitting at the kitchen table alongside the girl. The kitchen didn’t look much tidier than the rest of the house but at least the surfaces looked cleaner and the only aroma came from something cooked earlier. Mickey stood by the cooker looking at right angles to the man leaning back in the chair. The girl eyed him suspiciously but said nothing. I saw a chair and sat down.

  “Find anything?” He grinned. His teeth were discoloured and at least two from the top row were missing. I hoped he didn’t like eating crunchy apples.

  “No, nothing. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure thing.” He smiled at us.

  “First off, who are you two and what’s your connection to this place?”

  “I live here. Name’s Rudolf, this is Twinky.” He nodded at the girl.

  “Nice name,” Mickey said. She glared at him as though wanting to say something but didn’t.

  “How long have Louis and Paulie Phipps lived here?”

  “Middle of last year, I think.” He paused. “Yeah, about a year sounds right.”

  “What does he do? You know, do either of them have paid employ?”

  “Leave it out, man.” Rudolf appeared to be choking back a laugh. “They’re a pair of scallywags, ducking and diving, a bit of this, bit of that, you know what people like them are like.”

  “How did they pay their rent?”

  “In cash, usually at the end of the month after I’d remind Louis it was due.”

  “I’m guessing they were successful duckers and divers. I mean, how else could they afford to live in the penthouse suite here?” I looked upwards.

  I was purposely trying to antagonise Rudolf. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his appearance; his telephone wire hair or his scruffy attire and his blasé indifference to the world around him. I didn’t like the fact he was a junkie, probably permanently stoned. He sensed my resentment and shuffled slightly in his seat.

  “Don’t be so hostile, man. I’m answering your questions, aren’t I? What you want to know?”

  “Tell me what dear old Louis has been up to for the past few months. What’s been his main source of income?” I said neutrally.

  “Mainly drug dealing. He buys and sells, mainly marijuana and a bit of cocaine. He sometimes sells ecstasy as well.”

  “Sweet Mary Jane,” Mickey said to no one in particular. “Who does he buy from and who does he sell it on to?” “Oh, come on, man, you know how many people around here use that stuff? Selling stuff round here is easy, man. Everyone wants it.”

  “What else does he do?”

  “He likes mugging students,” Twinky volunteered. “There’s lots living round this way. Louis and his brother swipe their money and their mobiles and sell them on.”

  “I believe his recent misdemeanours also include carjacking.” I stated flatly.

  “Oh yeah man, yeah, he did. Real excited about that one. Said it was going to make him rich.”

  “Rich? What did he mean?”

  “He didn’t actually say what or how. It was Paulie who said the car they filched had something valuable the owner would want back and would pay a good price for it.”

  I was very interested in this.

  “Okay, from the beginning. Tell me everything Phipps said about this. It’s very important you leave nothing out. I need to know exactly what he meant.” I said this slowly and firmly.

  “Didn’t really say that much, just said they’d ripped off a motor by Waterloo station and there were a couple of bags in the car. One was a briefcase and Phipps said what was in it would make him rich. I didn’t really believe him. Phipps was always talking about some deal, some scheme or other that would make him a shitpile of money; none of them ever came off so I didn’t take too much notice of this one either. Anyway, he gets busted a few days later as he’d dumped it by Brockwell Park.” He smiled. “Just after that, police came and searched the flat.”

  “The police searched his flat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They take anything?”

  “It was just one guy. I saw him leave. He didn’t have anything I could see.”

  The Phipps brothers had stolen a car. Why search their home as a result?

  “I didn’t ask what he was looking for. Guy seemed real heavy, man. I was relieved after he left.”

  “Heavy, in what sense?” I was curious.

  “Hard to say. I just got the impression he wasn’t ordinary police. This guy had an aura, y’know? We’ve been searched a few times by Drugs Squad but this guy wasn’t the same. He had, I don’t know, an edge, something almost frightening. You could see it in his eyes, man. That dude was on a mission.”

  I looked at Mickey. He was leaning back against the cooker with his arms f
olded taking in everything he’d heard. I was trying to take it all in. What could Rudolf be referring to by saying this guy was heavy?

  “Has this person, whoever he was, been back again?”

  “No, man, he’s not. I don’t want him in this place again.” “Did you go up to the flat and see if he’d removed anything?”

  “I just went upstairs, put the latch down on the door and shut it. I didn’t go into the flat. Phipps doesn’t like anyone in his place unless he invites them, you know what I’m saying? He can be a nasty son of a bitch, that Phipps.”

  “What happened when Phipps was released?” Mickey interjected.

  “Nothing really, man. They just came back here and carried on. They went to court but just got a suspended sentence. Things just went along all tickety-boo until a little while ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “They came back one night last week shitting themselves, especially the younger one,” Twinky volunteered. She seemed to find this quite amusing and was smiling.

  “Yeah,” Rudolf agreed. “Apparently, someone told them they were going to kill them. Supposed to have taken a shot at them as they were on their way home. Scared the crap outa them, man. Whoever it was did it again a few nights back but, since then, neither of the Phipps have been here. Is that why they ain’t been back lately, they in hiding?”

  “Did they say who it was?” I ignored the question.

  “Yeah, but I can’t remember the name they gave.” Rudolf looked apologetic.

  This accorded with what Louis Phipps had said. It would suggest that Phipps had taken something from the car and someone had hired Gant either to retrieve it or, failing that, eliminate the person responsible for it being missing. Gant doesn’t exactly work for a few pounds and a four-pack of beer so, if this was the case, whatever it was had to be something very important to someone.

  I looked at Mickey as if to ask if he had anything else to ask. He shook his head. I stood up.

  “Anyone living round here who Phipps sold drugs to, or was a friend and would know something about his recent movements?” I asked.