‘Do you think he’s still got the tapes, the knife, the rest of the stuff?’
‘He was pretty convincing if he hasn’t.’
‘He wasn’t bluffing, then.’
‘I’ve come across enough chancers in court. No, I’d say he wasn’t, for certain.’
‘But there’s nothing in it for him.’
‘We can’t take the risk. We have to recover the evidence.’
‘We don’t even know where he’s got it hidden.’
‘His house has to be favourite.’
‘So what do we do? Just walk in and ask him politely to hand it over?’
‘Funnee.’
‘I could always get a warrant, tell a magistrate we’re acting on information received, in connection with stolen property. We could search the house.’
‘No. We, you, can’t be anywhere near this.’
‘What then?’
‘Leave it to me. I’ll think of something.’
Twenty-eight
The Scorpio left the motorway and joined the B-road, passing a sign reading, ‘You are now entering Heffer’s Bottom. Please Drive Carefully.’ Mickey stuck to the speed limit religiously. He’d had enough grief to last him a lifetime, let alone a weekend.
‘Not bad, all things considered,’ Mickey said. ‘Four and a half hours. Probably a new Commonwealth record.’
Andi smiled. She was glad to be going home.
In the rear mirror the suburban sprawl disappeared behind a hedge. The road dipped down and narrowed and the constant hum of the M25 petered out.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were in the middle of the countryside, even though this was less than twenty miles from Charing Cross.
Heffer’s Bottom was situated in the no-man’s-land created by the Green Belt, the demilitarized zone between Essex and north-east London.
It fell within the Metropolitan Police area but was due to be handed over to Essex as part of yet another reorganization. The village police house had long since closed and the local bobby withdrawn and transferred to Edmonton.
Mickey drove past the 16th-century church and turned into the High Road. The village cricket pitch had been colonized by travellers six months ago.
They’d already looted the pavilion and burned it down, as a basis for negotiation.
About a dozen caravans were dotted around. The wicket, once tended lovingly by a local groundsman, had been desecrated. Where generations of amateur cricketers had lived out their fantasies, imagining themselves Trueman or Tyson, Bradman or Botham, there were the charred remains of a stolen builders merchants’ lorry.
Piles of scrap metal and pirate wooden pallets littered the site. Children and dogs ran wild. There were a few horses tethered to a fence and a couple of trotting carts.
Half a dozen battered trucks were parked up, none of them with valid tax discs, most of them run on illegal red agricultural diesel, stolen from local farms.
And, beside each caravan, a gleaming 4x4 off-roader. Landcruisers, Shoguns, Discoveries, even a brand-new Mercedes ML430.
These pikeys didn’t do badly for themselves, Mickey thought. Considering that they’re all supposed to be skint, scraping a living from old bits of scrap and flogging lucky heather door-to-door.
Since the pikeys arrived, there had been a spate of burglaries in the village and surrounding district. Garden sheds had been ransacked, lawnmowers, motorbikes, cars stolen. A few residents had reported break-ins. The French residence had already been a target.
They were after what they called ‘smalls’ – portable pieces of valuable jewellery.
The rule of law didn’t so much run in these parts as walk on by. That was if it bothered turning up at all.
The caller who rang the Ricky Sparke show complaining about police attitudes to rural crime and burglary struck a chord with Mickey. Collier St James was the next village away, across the county border.
On the rare occasions the cops did arrive, they always protested that there was nothing they could do unless they caught the culprit in the act.
Some residents said they had watched stolen vehicles being driven onto the travellers’ camp and could see their own property standing there in broad daylight in the middle of the old cricket pitch.
Individual officers sympathized but said they had been ordered to handle the pikeys with kid gloves as part of the Met’s Policing Diversity and Sensitivity Strategy.
Someone had identified the pikeys as an oppressed minority, which made them pretty much a protected species. Police patrols had orders not to enter the illegal settlement.
The truth was simpler than that, Mickey knew. The Old Bill were shit scared of pikeys. Always have been.
Travellers were invariably armed and unafraid to use whatever weapons came to hand.
So they were left alone, save for the DSS van arriving every fortnight to hand out the Giros.
These days the police policed those who consented to be policed, and that was about it, Mickey reckoned. Cowardice, moral and physical, was the order of the day.
Community policing extended to that part of the community likely to offer serious violence to the police.
The only time most of the taxpaying, law-abiding majority ever came into contact with the police was when they were nicked for doing 34 mph in a 30 mph zone or pulled over for a random seat-belt check. And would you mind blowing into this, sir.
Or when their car was nicked or their house was burgled and they were greeted with an indifferent shrug and offered a note for the insurance.
As the Scorpio passed the gypsy camp, a group of men watched it go by.
Word had got round that Mickey used to be Old Bill. The pikeys were suspicious of him.
Twice he had confronted them, the second occasion only ten days earlier, when he caught two of their number, a man of about twenty-three and a boy of fifteen, breaking into his garage and attempting to have it away with his golf clubs.
Mickey had taken a blow to the shoulder with a pitching wedge, but he’d managed to wrestle back his golf bag and his clubs.
That night a gang from the camp had arrived on his doorstep. He had faced them down with his ex-police revolver, which he had a licence to own, despite the post-Dunblane clampdown. They didn’t frighten him.
‘Next time I catch any of you fucking thieving pikeys on my property I’ll blow your heads off. I’ll round you up and shoot you like rats in a barrel. Understand?’
They understood. They always understood violence and the threat of violence. They had a grudging respect for Mickey.
Now they also had a grudge against him.
There had been another run-in in the local pub a couple of days later. To a loud chorus of approval from the regulars, Mickey had repeated his threat to shoot anyone he caught breaking into his property.
On neither occasion had the police been called. What was the point?
Mickey and Andi had discussed moving again. But where? They’d moved to the village to escape the inner city and give the kids a better chance in life.
Maybe this was as good as it got.
Mickey swung the Scorpio into the driveway.
The garage door was ajar.
‘Wait here.’
‘What is it, Mickey?’
‘Might be nothing. Just stay in the car.’
‘Did you leave the garage door open?’
‘No, I’m certain. Just hang on.’
‘Wotsup, Dad?’ asked Terry.
‘Stay put, son.’
Mickey reached under his seat and retrieved the metal Crook-Lok, a two-foot steel rod which fitted across the steering wheel when parked to deter thieves. He got out of the car and walked the five yards to the garage, a grey, prefabricated structure with a corrugated-iron roof. It had been put up in the Thirties by the original owners to house a black Austin Seven and a BSA motorbike and sidecar.
The Chubb padlock Mickey had installed to secure the doors had been wrenched open.
He instincti
vely opened the door with the end of the Crook-Lok. His police training had instilled in him the preservation of the crime scene. You never knew. There may be prints.
The lawnmower. Gone.
The kids’ bikes. Gone.
The golf clubs. Gone.
Mickey backed out and turned to Andi sitting in the car.
‘Mickey?’
‘Yep.’
‘All of it?’
‘Just about.’
‘Our bikes?’
‘Sorry, son. I’ll replace them.’
‘That’s all right, Dad,’ said Katie, who had stirred from her slumbers. ‘I’ve grown out of mine.’
Andi made to get out of the car.
‘Just hang on, love.’
‘You don’t think?’
‘I’ll go first. You stay here with the kids.’
Terry opened the back door.
‘Son, I said stay here,’ Mickey insisted.
He walked down the pathway, towards the house. The front door was hidden from view by a porch.
The frame was splintered and the door hanging by a single hinge. The resistance offered by the deadlock and the chain had proved futile. Mickey stepped inside.
There was shattered glass on the doormat and the hall table had been smashed.
Mickey opened the door of the cupboard under the stairs. The alarm box had been ripped off the wall and the bell disconnected.
Mickey hadn’t bothered plumbing it into a monitoring centre. He figured that by the time the Old Bill arrived, the thieves would already have been long gone.
He pushed open the door to the family room.
Carnage.
And the stench.
God, the stench.
The furniture had been slashed and the walls smeared with shit, like the H-blocks in the Eighties.
Picture frames containing family photos were strewn about the floor and crushed underfoot.
Mickey bent down and picked up Katie’s first school photo, gap-toothed, pigtailed innocence. The glass had been shattered and there was a yellow stain on her face.
Someone had pissed on it.
Someone had pissed on his daughter.
Someone had pissed on his family and smeared shit on his walls.
In the cracked mirror above the York stone fireplace, Mickey could see the distorted reflection of some crude lettering.
He turned to inspect it.
In what looked like blood-red spray paint was written:
NEX TIM ITS YOU COZZER
Bastards.
‘MICKEY!’
Andi stood in the doorway.
‘I told you to stay in the car.’
‘What’s that smell?’
‘Just get out of here, please.’
‘Is it what I … Jeesus, Mickey.’
‘Please, love, just take the kids outside.’
But Andi ignored him.
She ran upstairs to the bedroom. Her jewellery box lay open on the quilt. It was all gone.
Not valuable, but sentimental.
Her gran’s engagement ring. Her dad’s watch. Mickey’s dad’s antique fob.
At least they hadn’t trashed the bedroom.
She walked back downstairs, clutching the empty jewellery box.
Mickey walked towards her and hugged her tight. ‘Everything?’
‘Oh, God.’
Terry said nothing, just turned and walked out of the house. Katie’s eyes began to stream. Mickey reached out and embraced her, pulling her close.
Utter desolation.
‘Just go and get back in the car.’
‘But I’ve got to clear up. We can’t leave it like this.’
‘It’s a crime scene, love.’
‘It’s our HOME, Mickey.’
‘I know. Just, please, do as I say. I’ll call it in.’
‘It was those, those bloody travellers, wasn’t it?’
‘A million.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘I’d rather you waited in the car.’
‘Mickey, I’m not being forced out of my own kitchen by those animals.’
‘OK. I’ll come with you. Let me go in first.’
Mickey pushed open the kitchen door.
It appeared to be unscathed.
Thank God.
Andi filled the kettle and plugged it in.
She went over to the fridge and stooped to retrieve a bottle of milk.
Next to the fridge was a dish of cat food, untouched. Funny, they’d left her enough for three days.
From the next room came a piercing shriek.
‘DADDY! DADDY! DADD-EEE!’
Katie.
Mickey and Andi rushed back to the family room.
Their daughter was frozen to the spot, her delicate hands clasped to her cheeks.
‘Why aren’t you in the car?’
‘Daddy, look, oh, look, oh, no.’
Delayed shock, Mickey thought.
He put his arm round his daughter and began to manoeuvre her out of the room.
‘Don’t worry, precious. It’ll clean up. It’ll be all right. I promise.’
‘No, Daddy. It’s, it’s Tammy.’
‘What about Tammy?’
‘Look, Daddy. There. Loook.’
There, on the carpet, beside the sofa, in a pool of red, lay Tammy, the family Siamese. Mickey turned her over with his toe. Her throat had been cut.
‘NEX TIM ITS YOU COZZER.’
It wasn’t written in blood-red paint.
It was written in blood.
Twenty-nine
Mickey handed Andi the keys to the Scorpio, told her to take the kids to her mum in Palmers Green and stay there.
Her protests were muted. She knew he was right.
The police would be here soon. Mickey would handle everything.
Terry sat in front with his mother. As the car backed out of the driveway they all waved, mechanically.
Andi lowered the window.
‘Are you going to be OK?’
‘Fine, yeah. Call me when you get to your mum’s.’
‘You coming over later?’
‘Nah, I’ll stay here tonight. The glazier can’t get here until tomorrow morning. We’re going to need a new lock, too. I’ll sort it. You just look after the kids. Give my love to your mum. Sleep tight.’
‘God bless.’
As the Scorpio rounded the corner, a police jam-sandwich turned into the road and pulled up outside the house. It was almost an hour since he’d dialled 999.
Two young coppers got out. Mickey didn’t recognize either.
‘Evenin’ all,’ said Mickey, sarcastically.
‘Good evening, sir. Sorry we’re …’
‘Late?’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry. We got here as quick as we could. We’ve only got two cars covering the whole of the north-eastern sector tonight. There’s been a bit of a set-to in a boozer in Waltham Abbey. Fortunately we were in the car park checking tax discs when it all went off.’
‘Now there’s a surprise.’
‘Burglary, is it?’
‘Correct.’
Mickey examined the two cops.
Christ, they didn’t look much older than Katie. Was I like that once?
He led them into the house and showed them the damage. He explained the background.
There had been a wave of break-ins since a gang of ‘travellers’ set up on the municipal cricket pitch.
‘Mustn’t jump to conclusions, sir,’ said the younger cop, blonde hair, freckles, NHS-style specs. Dead spit for the Milky Bar Kid.
‘Look, son. I’m an ex-DS. Twenty-five years in. Trust me. I know the patch. I’ve had trouble with them before.’
‘That’s as maybe, sir. But we can’t rule out the possibility that this was an opportunist attack.’
‘So what the fuck do you make of that, Sherlock?’
Shit on the walls and ‘NEX TIM ITS YOU COZZER’.
‘Smack of motive to you, does it?’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘I’ve had a couple of run-ins with them.’
‘Did you report them?’
‘What was the point?’
‘We take all such incidents very seriously.’
‘Oh, do me a favour. If that’s the case why don’t you just steam in with a warrant and search the site?’
‘There are procedures, sir.’
‘Procedures, my arse. There’s always been procedures. Procedures never caught a real villain. I’d have given them a kicking until they put their hands up to it, fucking thieving dids. I dunno why I even bothered calling you. I might just as well go round there myself and sort it.’
‘Sir,’ said the pimply young Plod with a hint of condescension in a voice that had barely broken, ‘I wouldn’t recommend that. We can’t have anyone taking the law into their own hands.’
‘Don’t patronize me, son. I was in the Job when you were a fucking tadpole.’
‘Now you listen to me, Mister, that’s right, MISTER French,’ snapped back the Milky Bar Kid. ‘You’re not in the Job any more. Things are different now, what with PACE and Macpherson. And if you ask me, all the better for it. We’re a community force these days, we have to respect ethnic diversity and multi-culturalism. Members of the travelling community have the right not to be smeared as common criminals.’
‘Rights?’ Mickey laughed. ‘Don’t give me rights. Don’t give me multi-fucking-culturalism. The only culture these fucking pikeys have is thieving. Whose side are you on, son?’
‘It’s not a question of sides. Look, for what it’s worth, I agree.’ It was a million that the pikeys – er, sorry, the members of the travelling community – were behind the burglaries. But it was more than his job was worth to investigate further, otherwise he’d have the equal opportunities committee, the local police liaison working group and the ACC (Diversity) down on him like a ton of hot horseshit. And what would that do for his career?
Precisely, Mickey thought. This little boy was on the fast track, the up escalator, through Bramshill to the very top. He’d come across his sort before. This kid reminded him of a WPC he’d worked with at Tyburn Row for a few months in the late Seventies, soft hands, soft politics, straight out of the LSE via Hendon. Always talking about ‘crime management’ and community relations.
Now look at her. Tipped as the next Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
To Hell in a Handcart Page 15