The Aden Vanner Novels

by Jeff Gulvin

  Jones nodded. ‘You told me you were in a hurry, remember. I looked through the records myself.’

  Morrison laid the pictures down on the table and stood a moment with his hands behind his back. ‘I’m grateful, Alan. Very grateful.’ He nodded to the right-hand picture. ‘When?’

  ‘Five years ago. A Securicor van was attacked. The raid went wrong. This was dug out of the armour plating. Browning 9mm. The gun was recovered. Thieves were caught.’

  ‘Conviction?’

  Oh yes.’

  Morrison looked round at him. ‘Where?’

  ‘Hammersmith,’ Jones said.

  In his car outside Morrison sat very still, watching the London traffic; a motorcycle courier whipping in and out of the taxis. He lifted the receiver of his car phone. It was all coming together. He had known it all those years ago when first he laid eyes on the man, and now he knew it for sure.

  Scammell met him at Hammersmith and they waited while the WPC went back through the records on the Crime Register. Eventually she came through to where they waited and passed them the documentation.

  ‘There you are, Sir,’ she said. ‘September 1989. Securicor Van, raided in the High Street. We caught them.’

  Morrison was leafing through the documents. ‘Convicted.’ He spoke as he read. ‘January the following year.’

  ‘Got to trial quite quickly.’

  ‘Terrence Raynor and Floyd Hurst.’ He passed the file to Scammell and looked up at the girl. ‘It says the weapon was destroyed.’

  She nodded. ‘We waited the six weeks for appeal but the defence never intended any. The plea was guilty.’

  ‘And the directive came back from the court?’

  She indicated the folder. ‘It’s all in there, Sir.’

  Morrison made a face. ‘Yes, Constable. Only it isn’t.’ He stood up and passed the file to Scammell. ‘We’d like to talk to your properties people.’

  Night blanked the street through the bay windows. ‘You must have a key, Sarah.’

  She slumped in the chair, a glass clutched to her. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Why not? What if there’s a fire?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘You’re protecting him. You told me you let the flat through an agent. You told me you didn’t know him.’ He stood in front of her, gesticulating.

  She said nothing.

  ‘Why? Were you feeding him the information?’

  Her eyes sparked then. ‘You know I wasn’t. I’ve already told you. He only showed up last year. That was the first time I’d seen him since it happened. He wanted a London base. I rented him the flat. I only had one key. I never got round to getting another cut.’

  Vanner rested his knuckles on the table. ‘Your ex living upstairs, murdering hit and run drivers.’

  ‘I have never fed him information, Aden. I’ve never even been up there. I do not have a key.’

  ‘Sarah.’ Vanner crouched down next to her, let his hand fall over hers.

  She looked at him then and the pain was high in her face. ‘I’m telling you the truth. I do not have a key. He just showed up one day and knocked on the door. He was working in Scotland on the rigs. He said he needed to rent a place here in London for when he was off.’

  ‘So you offered him the flat?’

  ‘Well why not? We’d had a child together for Christ’s sake. I trusted him.’

  Vanner got to his feet again. ‘Okay, you don’t have a key.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Do you have a crowbar?’

  There was no light in the window of the flat. Vanner stood looking up from the pavement, the tyre lever dangling from his hand. Sarah hugged herself on the steps behind him. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said.

  It was much darker down the side of the house, the thin light from the streetlamps not able to reach much further than the pavement. The stairs rose sharply against the wall. Metal steps which clanked under the weight of Vanner’s feet. Sarah came up behind him. Cars drilled up and down the road below them. At the door Vanner listened. He heard nothing and looked more closely at the lock, then he eased the tyre lever into the crack and tested his weight. Wood splintered as he forced the catch open.

  He was greeted by a square, dark landing with further steps leading up from it. The carpet felt vaguely damp under his feet and the cold nibbled at him. ‘Light?’ he asked, as Sarah appeared behind him. She fumbled a moment, fingers scraping along the wall and then light flooded the landing. The carpet was blue and old and stained.

  ‘Damp up here,’ Sarah said. ‘It was always separate from the house. I guess we neglected it.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My mother before me.’

  Vanner gripped the bannister rail that bordered the stairs. Above him he saw a second landing, again very tight, confined on three sides by firmly closed doors. He started the stairs. They creaked under him, groaning as if in protest at being woken after too long asleep. At the top he paused and then he tried the door nearest to him. It opened onto a cubby hole of a kitchen; neatly furnished with compact but functional units. A Baby Belling was complemented by a small, white microwave. A door filled the space of the far wall.

  ‘Bathroom,’ Sarah told him.

  The second door was a bedroom: a single bed covered by a red duvet. A slim, brown wardrobe against the wall. Next to the bed was a night table with a photograph of the curly haired man, Sarah, and the little girl cuddled between them. Sarah stared at it for a moment and then she looked away.

  Vanner closed the door and turned to the room at the front; the light he had seen from the street. He opened the door and stepped back. He could see by the glow from the street outside that the room was empty. Glancing back at Sarah he stepped inside and felt for the light switch. The room was bathed in pale orange, the bulb too weak for the space. But it was all the light that he needed.

  Along the far wall from the door, a flat-topped wall unit like a desk was built in black. A single folding chair, also in black, was tucked in under it. Vanner stared. Alongside the desk, a metal wall-rack of shelves lifted from floor to ceiling: the third shelf stacked with box files and, below that, a sheaf of blue manila folders. Vanner’s gaze crawled from the shelves to the desk, where an office-sized typewriter squatted.

  He stepped into the room, feeling the presence, the silence of four years of searching. Each step had weight in it and his breath was high in his throat. The window separated the desk from a built-in cupboard in the wall behind the door. Vanner assumed this had once been a bedroom.

  ‘Aden.’ Sarah’s voice was so quiet it almost made him jump. He glanced at her.

  ‘Look,’ she said.

  He followed where she pointed and his breath dried in his mouth. Top shelf of the metal rack, he had not noticed it; the weight of the files jumping out at him. He stepped closer. A man in uniform, maroon-coloured beret on his head. His own face looked back at him.

  Sarah moved alongside him and gazed down at the typewriter. ‘I don’t believe this.’

  Vanner stared suddenly at her. ‘You’ve honestly never been up here?’

  She was looking at the desk, at the chair, at the shelves. She shook her head. ‘Not since he rented it.’

  Vanner looked back at his picture. He reached up to touch it and stopped himself.

  ‘Prints,’ Sarah said.

  A blue folder lay on the desk beside the typewriter. Taking a pen from his pocket, Vanner flicked open the cover and a whole stack of newspaper clippings bulged at him. He stared at them. Every one was about him. Every comment, every press photograph taken during the course of the investigation. He eased the pen through them, moving one aside only to reveal another. Every paper, every headline, every word. The army photos that had appeared in the press after Highbury. Ancient things, taken in Belfast when he was ten years younger.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What is this?’

  ‘God knows. It’s creepy. Maybe he was monitoring you. After all you were trying to catch him.’

  Vanner sta
red at her. ‘This is your ex-husband,’ he said. ‘You’re telling me you didn’t know?’

  ‘We were never married.’ She took a handkerchief from her pocket and cupped a box file with it, carefully lifting it down to the desk. ‘And I told you already—I didn’t know.’

  ‘What did he do after Meggie died?’

  Sarah made a face. ‘He went inside himself. Silent. I’d never known him silent.’

  She opened the file and nodded at the papers that lay on top.

  ‘Duncan Scott. Conviction. Prison details. Release date.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Vanner said.

  ‘He went off. Not straight away.’ She was not looking at him. ‘He stayed with me for a while—until after the funeral.’ She looked up at him then. ‘He didn’t cry, you know.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  She shook her head. ‘I held Meggie in the road. I was all over the place. John just stood there. At the funeral I was a wreck, almost hysterical. He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, staring at the grave. He was the last one to leave. I think he stayed all night.’ She looked away again. ‘I never saw him cry.’

  ‘Black?’ Vanner said.

  ‘I don’t know. As I said, we’d parted by then. It could’ve been.’

  Vanner gazed about the room once more. ‘What did you say he was—an oil rigger?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sarah closed the box file.

  ‘Not a soldier then. Not a policeman.’

  She looked up sharply. ‘Yes he was.’

  He turned to her. ‘Policeman?’

  ‘Soldier. He spent five years in the Territorials.’

  Vanner nodded. ‘Browning 9mm.’

  He looked at her again. ‘You really didn’t know about this?’

  She sighed. ‘How many more times, Aden?’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Now and again. I never came up here. I didn’t want to. We had a flat like this when we were together in Newcastle. Sometimes he came downstairs. He really wasn’t here that much. You’ve seen that.’

  ‘You must have talked. You must have suspected.’

  ‘I hardly saw him. I didn’t want to suspect.’

  ‘He works in Scotland?’

  ‘Aberdeen. Offshore. He’s only down once every couple of months or so.’ She paused.

  ‘Didn’t it strike you as odd—a man who works offshore renting a flat in London?’

  ‘He’s an electrical engineer. His head office is here. I don’t know; I never really thought about it.’

  ‘What was he like before Meggie died?’

  ‘Gentle. Very gentle. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘Not a hard case then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he’d been in the TA?’

  ‘Yes. Officer.’

  ‘What rank?’

  ‘Lieutenant, I think. He was very good. Very tough. Disciplined.’ She paused. ‘He started drinking about a month after it happened and then he stopped again just like that, as if he daren’t let go of any part of himself. He withdrew completely. Silent. Angry. So very, very angry. But it was cold anger, you know.’ She gazed about her. ‘I can’t believe any of this. I just cannot believe it.’

  Vanner looked around the rest of the room: photographs hung on the wall by the door, Hamilton and Meggie and Sarah; Meggie on her own. He looked back again to the neat, metal racking and the black desk and chair. Sarah was staring at his picture, her arms clasped about her. She must have felt his gaze for she looked up, fear in her face, eyes wide like a rabbit at the roadside.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It must be a shock. The man you loved—had a child with.’

  Extending the sleeve of his shirt to cover his fingers, he opened the door of the wardrobe and stepped back. A single hanging rail, one coat hanger holding a pair of black lightweight trousers. On the shelf above it, a black sweater and something smaller, like a soft hat. Below the rail, slightly raised on a shoe rack, a pair of black lace-up boots. They were stuffed with paper as if to dry them.

  Taking his pen, Vanner lifted the smaller item on the shelf and he saw it was a ski mask with holes pierced only for the eyes. Then he noticed a green cardboard box pushed right to the back. He had not been able to see it until he moved the sweater. He glanced at Sarah and then eased the box forward and prised off the lid with the pen. It was empty.

  ‘Still no gun then,’ he said. ‘Somehow that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Maybe he hides it.’

  ‘What better place?’ Vanner swept the room with his hand. ‘Everything else is here.’

  Downstairs he poured them each a drink and passed a glass to Sarah.

  ‘Where does he work?’

  ‘I told you. Aberdeen.’

  ‘I mean what company?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve got no other address for him?’

  ‘No.’

  Vanner thought for a moment. ‘I’ll find him. When he’s up there he’s offshore?’

  ‘As far as I know. It’s contract stuff I think.’

  ‘Somebody’ll know him.’ He put down his drink. ‘You better get McCague on the phone. He’ll want to get SOCO over here.’

  ‘Where’re you going?’

  ‘Aberdeen of course.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve had a lot to drink.’

  ‘I’ve driven on a lot more. Anyway, believe me, Sarah. I’ve never felt more sober.’

  In the morning Morrison drove down the M3 to Fleet. Scammell sat next to him with his case by his feet. Winter sun drifted weakly against the windscreen. ‘You’ve always suspected Vanner, Sir, haven’t you.’ Morrison made a face. ‘Suspected of something, yes. Right from the off. Up there in Scotland, when he was transferred to my team, I was wary of him. I thought he might be a spook or something. God only knows what games were being played in those days.’ He shook his head. ‘There were always the rumours: about his past, the timing of his resignation.’ He glanced round at Scammell. ‘Stalker went to Belfast in the May of that year you know.’ He paused. ‘But this? I didn’t suspect this until Daniels.’

  ‘If it is him and the papers get hold of it the aftershock will go on forever,’ Scammell said.

  ‘Home Office won’t exactly be pleased either. Credibility in tatters. Blair’ll have a field day.’

  ‘Vanner.’ Scammell shook his head. ‘I have to say, Sir. I had him pegged as a good copper. Moved up quickly. Been around. His guvnor had a lot of time for him.’

  ‘Vanner’s bright, David. He can manipulate with the best of them.’

  ‘McCague’s a tough old bird even so. Hard guy to fool I’d’ve said.’

  ‘Everyone’s vulnerable, David. Loyalty is a strange thing. Besides you have to ask yourself how much McCague was fooled. He let us investigate didn’t he.’

  They pulled off the motorway and drove down towards the town centre, before turning into the sprawling new housing estate that devoured right into the woodland. Scammell pulled a face. ‘Bit up-market for an ex properties man, Sir.’

  ‘I don’t think he lives here, David.’ Morrison pointed through the window. ‘Other side.’

  They criss-crossed streets and finally turned into a cul-de-sac of modest, semi-detached houses. Morrison pulled up outside number 14. Scammell picked up his case and they both got out of the car.

  ‘Going to get a shock after five years,’ Scammell said. Morrison buttoned his coat and led the way up to the door.

  Walter Taylor took them through to a small lounge and ushered his grey-haired wife into the kitchen. Quietly he closed the door and offered them both a seat. He was a portly man, approaching seventy; his hair all but gone and his nose bulging with blood vessels.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘The Met. CIB even.’ He shook his head. ‘I hope it’s not me you’re investigating.’

  Scammell smiled. ‘You’re a civilian, Mr Taylor. It wouldn’t be us.’

  Morrison sat quie
tly for a moment. Taylor perched nervously, hunched on the edge of his seat with his legs tucked up. He looked from one to the other of them. ‘My wife’ll be in with some tea in a minute,’ he said. ‘How are things up there? I haven’t been to London since I retired.’

  Morrison uncrossed his legs. ‘You were in charge of the properties strongroom in Hammersmith in 1989.’ He said it flatly. Taylor looked at him out of liquid blue eyes, a fleck of saliva on his lip.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He seemed about to say something else when the door opened and his wife came in with a tray. She smiled and set it down on the coffee table and then left them alone again. Morrison returned his attention to Taylor.

  ‘You were about to tell us something, Mr Taylor?’

  ‘Wally, please. Call me Wally. I was always Wally.’

  Morrison nodded. ‘What were you going to say, Wally?’

  ‘The gun.’ Taylor rolled his eyes to the ceiling as he said it. He scraped a hand over the sagging flesh of his face. ‘You’re here about the gun aren’t you.’

  Scammell looked at Morrison. ‘Been on your mind has it, Wally?’

  ‘You can say that again. Not a day’s gone by when I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘What happened?’ Morrison asked him.

  Taylor sighed. ‘I was due for retirement. Only a couple of months to go. Forty years I did, you know. No mistakes. Nothing in forty years.’ His eyes moistened with memory. Scammell passed him a cup of tea.

  ‘The case went to trial and the gun was sent up and back again as normal. They got a conviction. I even think the plea was guilty.’

  Morrison nodded.

  ‘Anyway we waited the six weeks for appeal and then the order came down to destroy the gun. It was used in a raid on a security van. Dug a bullet out of the armour plating they did.’

  ‘We know,’ Scammell said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well …’ Taylor sat further forward in his seat, replacing his cup on its saucer. ‘I went in to get the gun and it wasn’t there. I looked for it but it had gone. Vanished. We had quite a lot of stuff in there at the time; knives, dusters, coshes. A sawn-off shotgun. Even a grenade, would you believe?’ He almost chuckled but then his eyes darkened again. ‘Sorry, I’m getting off the point. Well anyway, it wasn’t there.’