PC Donaldson said he’d do the £1 notes with Jane while Kath went to the canteen.
She saw Bradfield there and he asked how it was going. She didn’t want to steal Jane’s thunder and simply said WPC Tennison had some good news for him. He was out of the canteen like a shot.
As Kath had anticipated Bradfield was jubilant, clapping his hands and full of praise for a job well done as he now had something concrete to put to O’Duncie, though he would have to wait until his solicitor Cato Stonex arrived to do a further interview, sadly without DS Gibbs. However, he was straight on the phone to tell A10 about the money and that WPC Tennison was available to make a statement that the young girl in the bedroom had lied about seeing DS Gibbs assault O’Duncie. The A10 DCI didn’t sound happy, even though Bradfield and Gibbs were ‘one of their own’, and said they would attend the station to speak with Tennison in the afternoon.
After another half-hour Jane was also able to tell Bradfield that there was a total of £180 in £1 notes that matched the serial numbers on the list, making a recovered total of £1,380 in different banknotes stolen by Julie Ann Collins from her father. He asked Jane to put the box of money in a confidential dispatch bag, secure it well with a numbered ratchet seal and get two uniform PCs in a patrol car to take it to the lab for the attention of DS Lawrence asap. She was then to come to his office.
‘Sit down, Jane. I just wanted to have a chat so that it’s clear why I have not invited you to sit in on the interview with O’Duncie. I know you have the record of all the individual notes and amounts that matched, but A10 are coming in to talk to you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So it’s not possible for you to be in two places at once, right? So I’ve asked Kath instead.’
‘I understand, sir, and I’m grateful you even considered having me present for the interview.’
‘You’ve done a good job, Tennison, and learnt a valuable lesson about procedure, though I admit I should have advised you better after the search and seizure of the money.’
‘You did, sir, but I was a bit confused and misunderstood you,’ she said, revealing her loyalty and what she intended to tell A10.
‘You’re entitled to have your constables’ federation rep present when they interview you.’
‘Do I need to?’ she asked nervously.
‘No, but I would advise that you do. They play on inexperience, will try and twist what you say and can be threatening about a probationer’s future career. It can be pretty daunting. PC Donaldson is the PCs’ rep and he will stamp down on them if they try anything on with you.’
‘Thank you, sir, I appreciate the advice and I won’t let you down again.’
‘I’m counting on that, Tennison, especially if you hope to join the CID as a detective someday.’
She blushed at his words and he cocked his head to one side, smiling.
‘You look cute when you do that, you know. You get two pink spots on your cheeks.’
Jane returned to the incident room, followed by Bradfield. Kath thought she looked nervous and upset, unaware that she actually felt pleased. Kath turned to everyone and wafted her hand to get their attention.
‘Listen up, we got a major link from WPC Tennison. She painstakingly matched serial numbers on the banknotes brought in from O’Duncie’s drug squat.’
Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened to Kath as she continued.
‘She discovered that nearly one and a half grand matched to the money withdrawn from the bank by Mr Collins, money subsequently stolen by his daughter Julie Ann.’
There was a round of applause, and Jane blushed again.
Bradfield looked at her, smiling. ‘She’s got us all out of a sticky patch and hopefully O’Duncie will now withdraw his allegations and DI Spencer Gibbs will be reinstated.’
The applause now turned to a cheer at the mention of the admired and well-respected Gibbs.
Sergeant Harris overheard the applause as he walked into the office carrying an envelope in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. It was rather eerie but more so for Harris, when on seeing him everyone went quiet, revealing their loathing of the man.
‘What can we do for you, Sarge?’ Kath asked.
‘There’s a Cato Stonex at the front counter, says he’s—’
‘Get that bastard O’Duncie brought up from the cells to my office, Sergeant Harris, but give me some time alone with Stonex first,’ Bradfield said and slapped his thigh with Jane’s report on the seized banknotes. He was really looking forward to the interview, especially with Cato present as well.
Jane wondered why Harris had come upstairs himself as normally he’d bark at the front-desk PC to pass on something to the CID. She looked questioningly at Kath who shrugged her shoulders.
Harris hesitated and Bradfield asked him if there was anything else. He nervously held up the envelope. ‘Yes, sir, an officer found these papers left in the PCs’ writing room and thought they might belong to Tennison.’ He put the envelope on the table, turned swiftly and walked out, his nose very much out of joint.
Jane didn’t really need to look in the envelope: she knew it was her lost list and the property-store receipt. She peeped inside, then looked at Kath and gave her a thumbs-up.
Bradfield leaned towards the two of them. ‘What was that about?’
‘Nothing, sir, it’s just my application form for the section house,’ Jane said, deciding it was over and done with where Harris was concerned and he probably wouldn’t be on her back again.
As Bradfield walked out, Kath moved closer to Jane. ‘That was good, you could have put that two-faced Harris bastard right in it, but you’re learning fast, means you got one over that bugger and he’ll know it.’
Cato Stonex wore a grey suit, blue shirt with a starched white stud collar, cufflinks and a dark navy tie. He was rather good-looking and very overconfident as he entered Bradfield’s office carrying a large bulging briefcase.
‘Good morning,’ Bradfield said but did not get up. He simply gestured to the seat opposite him and introduced WPC Morgan.
‘You need to know that your client has been using you for his own malicious ends.’
‘Well, I would refute that, DCI Bradfield, especially as I have a witness who was present when DS Gibbs struck Mr O’Duncie in the bedroom.’
‘She lied for him. WPC Tennison, who will be making a statement to A10, was already taking her downstairs when your client fell and broke his nose trying to escape arrest. I was also a witness to this and the fact O’Duncie tried to bribe me and DS Gibbs.’
‘Well, the young lady seemed truthful enough to me when I interviewed her, and it’s well known police officers protect, sorry, corroborate, each other like a “band of brothers”.’
Bradfield smiled. ‘She’s fifteen years old, so that means you took a statement from her illegally with no adult present to confirm it. O’Duncie was having unlawful sexual intercourse with her at the time we entered the room. It’s a statutory offence as he’s over twenty-four so it doesn’t matter if he thought she was sixteen . . . ’
Stonex was about to say something but Bradfield held up his hand. ‘Please let me finish . . . then there’s administering drugs, which he gave her before sex, to facilitate intercourse, which done to a fifteen-year-old is technically rape as I see it. That’s what we’re telling her poor parents as well.’
This was all news to Kath and something Bradfield had obviously kept to himself for the interview with good reason.
Stonex sat back in his chair, sniffed and rubbed his nose. He took a deep breath and sighed. ‘You have been brushing up on your law, DCI Bradfield.’
‘Well, I hate to see an upstanding solicitor like yourself had over by a lowlife drug dealer like O’Duncie, who won’t even be able to pay your fees.’
There was a look of disbelief on Stonex’s face as he asked what he meant. Bradfield went into detail about the money that had been stolen by Julie Ann from her father. He explained how £2,780 wa
s found in Terry O’Duncie’s room and the serial numbers on a total of £1,380 worth of different-denomination notes matched to the list provided by the bank. He added that the stolen banknotes were now all at the Yard being treated for fingerprints to be checked against those of their two victims, Mr Collins and O’Duncie himself.
‘Nearly half the money seized is stolen and the rest believed to be the proceeds of drugs, so that leaves your client without a pot to piss in and facing a charge that he murdered Julie Ann Collins for the money.’
‘So you’re saying you won’t be restoring the money?’
‘Correct, and he will also be charged with possession with intent to supply heroin and marijuana, and with various other drugs offences. No doubt with his previous he will be sent to prison for a long stretch, but should it transpire that any of the money’s legit then it could be restored to you as his solicitor.’
‘On the assumption—’
‘That we have ironed out the situation with your client’s false accusations regarding his broken nose and DS Gibbs stealing any money,’ Bradfield said and laid out the photographs of Julie Ann Collins’ body.
‘Your client has essentially denied knowing this victim as a close acquaintance, but as you’ve just heard we now have evidence to the contrary, not to mention her finger-prints in his bedroom at the squat. How you choose to break the good news to him is up to you.’
‘Well, I certainly think it’s time I had a serious conversation with him,’ Stonex replied, annoyed that he’d been made a fool of, not only by O’Duncie but also by Bradfield who was one step ahead of the game.
‘Good, WPC Morgan will escort you down to the cells.’
Cato Stonex hesitated but Bradfield pushed back his chair and stood up, checking his watch.
‘We can reconvene in say twenty minutes or so.’
Kath returned to Bradfield’s office a few minutes later and told him that Stonex was really pissed off with O’Duncie and the first thing he said was, ‘I don’t like being made to look like a clown, Terry.’
‘Well, let’s just hope he persuades O’Duncie to play ball. Otherwise we may still have unsolved murders on our hands.’
‘That was a stroke, sir, holding back about the girl being fifteen and Julie Ann’s fingerprints in the bedroom.’
‘I’ve never met her parents and haven’t a clue how old she is, but then neither’s Stonex. As for Julie Ann’s prints, well hopefully they might be there, but it wouldn’t prove he killed her,’ he said casually.
Kath knew he didn’t always play by the rules, but she’d never realized how canny he was and he’d certainly put the wind up Cato Stonex.
‘Do you think O’Duncie will confess now?’ she asked.
‘I fancy him more for killing Eddie Phillips, but to be frank there are some things that don’t add up with him and Julie Ann. If he killed her in that shithole squat for the money then it would more likely have been just after she ran off from her dad’s, but why bring her body all the way over to our patch? Why not dump or bury her somewhere out of town on the A40 or shove her in the canal like Eddie?’ He checked his watch again and stood up stretching and began pacing the room.
‘You want a cup of coffee?’ Kath asked, not wanting to question his valid points.
‘No thanks.’ He lit a cigarette and continued pacing up and down.
It was another ten minutes before two PCs escorted the handcuffed O’Duncie and Cato Stonex to Bradfield’s office. As they entered Stonex gave a discreet nod to Bradfield to indicate that his client was going to talk. The bruising from the broken nose had spread around O’Duncie’s eyes and he had fresh pieces of cotton wool plugged up each nostril. He was very subdued and sat next to Stonex opposite Bradfield and WPC Morgan.
Stonex handed over a short statement signed by O’Duncie in which he retracted all the allegations he had made against DS Gibbs and Bradfield, confessing they were a malicious attempt to get out of trouble. Bradfield asked Kath to take it through to WPC Tennison to give to A10 when they turned up to interview her. He waited for her to return before commencing the interview. He didn’t actually have to do so, but he liked watching the flash lawyer sweating and his client unable to keep his head up and look at him.
‘You are now aware of the serious charges against you, and we know you were intimate with Julie Ann Collins, so I suggest—’
Before he could finish O’Duncie leaned forwards. ‘She came to my place all on edge and looking a mess. She needed a place to doss down and told me her father had beaten the shit out of her with a golf club. I admit I’d slept with her a few times, but she was always up for it and there was nothing illegal, but this time she slept in one of the bedrooms downstairs.’
‘How long was she at the squat on this occasion?’ Bradfield asked.
‘Four, five days, maybe a week tops. She just lay around all day smoking dope. I asked her if she was OK and she said she was in pain and being sick. I thought it was just her kidneys actin’ up from the beating her dad give her. She became really strung out and started pestering me for heroin, so I gave her some for nothing an’ then she wanted more. I said she’d have to pay and she said she wanted to, and she was all kind of crazy sayin’ she’d been raped and was scared to say who it was as she reckoned he’d kill her. I wanted her to get out, but then she said she’d got a lot of cash. I swear before God I didn’t believe her, but then she got all serious and showed me a big wedge of money saying we could do some dealing together as she knew junkies at the Hackney drug centre where she was on a rehab programme.’
‘Was it the Homerton Hospital where your sister works?’ Bradfield asked and he nodded.
‘I said I needed to see a main dealer for supplies first and I was short on cash. She gave me one and a half thousand quid upfront to buy some good gear, and we’d agreed to cut the heroin down with powdered milk and then I would pay back what I owed her from the proft.’
‘Wait, wait a minute, Terry. You expect me to believe she just handed over the cash? What, you think we are fucking dumb? No way would she trust you with that amount of money.’
‘She did, listen to me, she knew the dealer so she was happy about it all. He’d been screwing her an’ she said if I tried to fuck her over she’d get him to sort me out.’
‘I need the name and address of your supplier.’
‘Shit, man, I can’t do that – it’ll be like puttin’ my head on the chopping block. I swear on my life I was gonna talk to Dwayne Clark to make the deal with a bloke in Manchester, but when I went round to his place he wasn’t there and his missus said he was in Coventry.’
‘You are walking right into it, sunshine. You said you were not at the squat when Julie Ann was murdered – that was a lie, you killed her and kept all the money, right, RIGHT?’
O’Duncie was sweating and twisting his body in his chair.
‘No, honest, it’s like I just told you. Dwayne wasn’t at his place so I just went back to the squat with the cash, but she wasn’t there and when I asked where she was one of the kids said she’d gone to Hackney for a few days. Then I heard she’d been murdered and I was scared to admit she had been dossing down at the squat because you’d think I killed her.’
Bradfield tapped the table with a pencil.
‘So let me get this straight: you admit Julie Ann was living at the squat, and she gave you a large sum of cash to buy a job lot of heroin, is that right?’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘Why Manchester for the drug deal? I mean that’s a good distance. Surely you know dealers closer to London?’ Bradfield said, strongly suspecting Joshua Richards, aka Big Daddy, was the dealer.
‘Listen, I’m telling you the fuckin’ truth. Besides, heroin’s much cheaper outside of London and we was asking for a big load of it.’
‘I see . . . Why didn’t Julie Ann go with you to see Dwayne?’
‘Because she felt sick, throwing up all the time.’
‘Did she tell you where she’d got th
e money from?’
‘No and I didn’t ask. Obviously I thought it was nicked, which I now know it was cos Mr Stonex told me it was her dad’s.’
‘You’ve got a fucking answer for everything, Terry.’
‘It’s the truth, man.’
Bradfield started jotting down some figures from the notes Jane had given him about the recovered money.
‘We know she stole just under £2,000 from her dad, you had £1,380 that matched the serial numbers, so IF she gave you one and a half grand what you do with the other £120?’
O’Duncie looked anxiously at his solicitor who said nothing.
‘I don’t do maths,’ he said nervously.
‘Oh right, unless it involves heroin, that is?’
‘I don’t do hard stuff either – check my body, there’s no needle marks. I just told you I never got to do the deal, that’s why I still got the cash.’
Everyone was shocked when Cato Stonex suddenly banged his pen down on the table in anger.
‘Enough, Terry, you’re digging a big hole and guaranteeing yourself a long prison sentence, so I suggest you stop messing about and tell DCI Bradfield the truth.’
‘OK, OK . . . like I said I never done the deal cos Dwayne was already in fuckin’ Coventry and I couldn’t get hold of him. I lied to Julie Ann and told her I’d given the money to Dwayne who had to go out of town to get the gear and we’d have to wait until he got back.’
‘So she was still at the squat waiting for the drugs?’
‘Yeah, but I give her some Quaaludes and she said she was gonna go and shack up with Eddie over at Hackney and arrange some deals with the clinic junkies. She said she’d be back and threatened me again if I tried to stitch her up.’
By now he was sweating so much his face was dripping and he kept on wiping himself with the sleeve of his shirt.
‘She only gave me £1,500 then left. I swear before God she left, man, and that was the last time I saw her. I never killed her, she left the squat a day or so before she was found dead. I can prove where I was: me and my girl went to the Chelsea Hotel, I even checked in under my real name.’
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