The Aden Vanner Novels

by Jeff Gulvin

  Pamela stood up. ‘We’re covering her workplace, Guv. But so far we don’t have any possibles.’

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘Everyone’s alibi’d,’ Pierce said.

  Weir glanced at him then back at Pamela. ‘What else?’

  ‘We’re checking the Turners’ social circle.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing so far.’

  Weir sat down on the edge of the desk and looked at Morrison. Morrison cleared his throat. ‘The gun — we know was a Tokarev,’ he said. ‘Eastern Europe. You know that Lambeth have sent it over to Ulster for checks.’

  ‘Guns get about, Sir,’ Ryan said.

  Morrison looked at him and nodded. ‘They do, Sid. But Lambeth are right to check.’

  ‘How long till we know if they find anything?’

  ‘Not long now. A week or so maybe.’

  Weir took over again. ‘We had a call from a man who claimed to have seen the subject on the Friday she went away. New Forest,’ he said. ‘Quiet road on the way to Fordingbridge. The cottage is just outside Little Woodfalls.’ He went on to tell them all that he and Ryan had learned from Michael Case. ‘Lab Liaison have done the business on the car again,’ he added. ‘It was clean. No sign of anyone being in the back who shouldn’t have been there. Swept and hoovered. She was obviously very particular.’

  ‘And nothing was reported?’ Morrison asked.

  Weir looked round at him and shook his head. ‘Case told us that Jessica was going to report it. He claims to have given her his name, but she didn’t write it down.’

  Ryan flipped open his A4 pad. ‘Case lives in Cadnam. It’s near Southampton. He’s forty years old and lives with his mum. He also owns a shotgun.’

  Silence. Tony Rob looked at Weir. ‘What about the dummy?’

  ‘There wasn’t one. Or at least there isn’t. Local boys did a sweep of the road for us and found nothing.’ He paused. ‘Somebody could’ve been there though. The road is open, ponies wandering about — that kind of thing. There could’ve been another car. Plenty of places to pull off unnoticed, especially in weather like it was that night. There could’ve been a third body.’

  Pamela made a face and Weir caught her eye. ‘Pam?’

  ‘Just wondering, Guv. Why would Case come forward with a story like that if it wasn’t true?’

  Weir looked briefly beyond her, then he caught Ryan’s eye. ‘Good point. He read about it in the papers. He’s a loner who lives with his mum.’ He made a face. ‘He’s probably telling the truth but we all know it happens. How many callers did Yorkshire get claiming to know the Ripper?’

  Fuller stuck a hand up. ‘Forgetting Case for a moment, Guv’nor,’ he said. ‘If the gun’s Russian—maybe we should talk to Interpol.’

  Weir looked at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘Maybe there’s some kind of Eastern European Crime Register we can look at. Gun could’ve been used somewhere else.’

  Ryan started to laugh and everyone looked round at him. ‘What’s funny, Sid?’ Fuller’s face flushed red.

  Ryan lifted a hand. ‘That is. There is no European Crime Register. They’re not quite that sophisticated. Mate of mine from SO13 was sent over to Yugoslavia a couple of years ago. Bomb went off in Slovenia, long before any of this Bosnian shit hit the fan. Some old toad sat on it, blew bits of him everywhere. Crime scene a mile square.’

  ‘What’s your point, Sid?’ Weir broke in on him.

  ‘I’m just saying, Guv. Sophisticated they ain’t. Old Bill over there rounded up a bunch of possibles for the bomb. They got a sniffer dog to walk up and down and nicked the first geezer he barked at.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Weir made a calming motion to curtail the laughter. ‘We don’t have very much. We know that. But what we do have is some hair, a broken nail and some pink wool. Pathologist has confirmed that — given the angle of trajectory — the height of the shootist is small enough to be a woman. Turner has told us that his wife owns no angora sweaters. She didn’t wear false nails and she didn’t have black hair. Unless he’s hiding a bit on the side himself we’re looking for a woman.’

  ‘So Case is just a waster then?’ Ryan said.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. I want him re-interviewed.’ He looked at the faces of the others. ‘I want the lover found. And I want the husband to tell us about anyone he knows who wears false nails and has long black hair. I want the house-to-house done again.’

  They groaned in unison. ‘That’s the way it is. We’ve done it once and got nowhere.’ Weir broke off and looked at them. ‘I also want Turner himself looked at. I want to know if he was playing away. I want to know what state the marriage was in. I want to know about money, life assurance, the whole bit. Come on, people. Let’s go to work shall we?’

  Tim Phelan was nervous. He sat in his front room, watching the lunchtime edition of Home and Away on the TV. Angel was stealing money from Alf. Stupid Australian rubbish. This was his life now, watching bronzed complete bodies on the TV; all shiny with sweat and the surf. Smiles and long hair and earrings and too many characters to get a grip on. But this was his life, every day he would sit here, trying not to look down at his own shattered body and compare it with the whole ones that lived and loved on the screen.

  Every morning he would wake to the silence and after a while drag his half-body from his bed, press it into ill-fitting clothes and spend the day dreaming of life and limbs and the time that was lost to him now. But that was until Thursday. Thursday he had seen her for the first time, sitting out there in the park on the children’s swings with her tight little body and her long black hair.

  At first the image had been pleasing. He could still be stirred even now, with no legs and half an arm. His one clean hand, good only for changing channels and masturbating. On the TV the images seemed to blur and he felt the nag of his bladder, ever-present almost these days: he hated himself for his weakness. Reaching for the remote control he flicked the set off and pressed his chair into motion. At the specially lowered window he looked out over the park.

  March wind chipped at the day, the sky a haze of cloud like rippled sand. The woman sat on the swings, head down, long black hair dripping over her face. For the second time in as many days a chill crept into his veins. She looked up and for an instant their eyes met, then she got up and walked away.

  Instinct. Years of training; every morning searching under his car, sidearm wherever he went. Till one day he looked the wrong way and stepped on a booby trap. And then he was down, watching his legs cartwheeling away from him. No pain, just shock and a sense of disbelief; the emptying of an unfilled bladder and a vague sense of embarrassment. And lying there thinking that semtex explodes at seven thousand metres per second. He wondered if they would find his legs four miles away. Booted feet sailing over buildings or crashing through a window or just disintegrating into a mush for all the good they were now.

  In the hospital he had wanted to die. That was after the morphine had worn off, the cheery fool’s optimism that came with a filling up of the drug. The first time his wife (long gone now) had visited, tears in her eyes and him white-faced with his jaws clamped, fighting a desire to scream at her. The ambulance and the pain, still conscious. Blood loss. He had begged them to slow down, turn off the bloody siren, dim those flashing lights and amble along till his blood dried up and he could slip into the oblivion that by rights should have been his. But they saved him. That’s what they called it. He looked down at himself now and felt the tingle of fear as the woman paused and looked back at him.

  Thin Hand Billy sat with Bigger Dan and watched Ginger Bill wash crack out of fine-grained cocaine. A single light bulb glowed above the stove; black cloth curtains, fastened to the sills, blocked all light from the windows.

  He stood in black jeans and a T-shirt, red hair spiked straight up from his head, a roll-up cigarette dangling in the corner of his mouth. He hummed to himself as he worked, spooning three parts coke into two empty Lucozade bottles and then pouring them
two-thirds full with water. On the stove, two huge pots used for jam-making slowly heated water. When the water in the pans came to boiling point Ginger Bill added the Bicarbonate of Soda to the bottles. Solution fizzing, he placed the bottles into the water. They frothed bubbles up the neck and he added a touch more of the baking powder.

  Thin Hand Billy lit a cigarette and clutched it between the fingers of his withered hand. He had been born with it, named as a kid and it stuck. He and Bigger Dan cut the crack into rocks and weighed them on Tanita scales. Once weighed they wrapped them into individual smokes with clingfilm.

  Bigger Dan yawned and lit a cigarette, waving the smoke from his face. ‘How’s it going?’

  Ginger Bill glanced round at him and shrugged. ‘Fine. These the last two?’

  ‘For tonight yeah?’

  ‘You taking those?’

  Bigger Dan nodded and looked then at Billy who took his knife to the mound before him.

  ‘Get the weight right, shithead. We ain’t giving it away’

  Billy swore at him and concentrated on the solidified solution.

  On the stove the water was dying in the bottles, the fizz still gurgling but with less ferocity now. In a few minutes it would cease completely and the ready-made rock would sink to the bottom of the bottle. Then Bill would pour off the residue of the water and the crack would be ready for cutting into single smokes at twenty pounds a time. A single smoke and you’re hooked. He didn’t smoke it himself. Thin Hand Billy was a crackhead and look at the slime ball he was.

  Bill sat on the stool and watched the solution. Bigger Dan got up and came over to him. ‘I could do that.’

  Ginger Bill grinned to himself. ‘Go on then,’ he said.

  When the last of the solution was ready and all the cocaine used up, Ginger Bill opened a beer and looked at the pile of merchandise as Dan and Billy separated it into paper bags.

  ‘Who’s coming for it?’

  ‘Pretty Boy. We’re meeting him downstairs.’

  Bill went to the blacked-out window and eased the curtain aside. Cars moved up and down the main road outside and he could make out the lights in the flats opposite.

  ‘You heard about Young Young, man?’ Dan asked him. Bill let the curtain drop again and looked back at him. ‘Fuckin’ nutter ain’t he.’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell him that.’

  ‘No. But true all the same.’

  ‘Goes his own way. Step’s really pissed off. Young Young shouldn’t dis’ the Daddy like that.’

  Bill nodded. ‘Pretty Boy know?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘He don’t give a fuck. He don’t know Jimmy Carter.’

  Detective Chief Inspector Westbrook took the phonecall at his desk in the offices of the Anti-Terrorist Branch at Scotland Yard. He had been flicking through what they had so far on the South Quay bombing the month before.

  ‘Westbrook.’

  ‘Ops room, John.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just took a call from over the water. DPOA in Belfast. They’ve had a call from an ex RUC Special Branch man in Yorkshire. Wheelchair case, medicalled out in ’86.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Reckons he’s being looked at.’

  Westbrook frowned. ‘Got a number for him?’

  He came off the phone to Tim Phelan and left the office. He was a big man, six four and built like the number eight he had been. DI Johnson came out of the squad room.

  ‘Word from Box, Guv. Possible.’

  ‘Anybody we know?’

  Johnson nodded.

  ‘Be with you in a minute.’

  Westbrook walked down the corridor and went into the Bomb Data Centre. Tania Briggs had the heavy-duty battery open on the desk before her. Jack Swann from the squad room squatted next to her, turning a Mark 15 timing device over in his hands.

  ‘What you got, Tania?’

  Briggs looked up at Westbrook. ‘Cunning bastards, Guv’nor.’ He indicated the bottom of the battery when it had been cut and welded back on. Safe but still packed with yellow-coloured semtex. ‘Mercury tilt to set off the timer. Eleven hours fifteen minutes later it’s sat in the cage all nicely primed.’ He pointed to the second mercury switch with the end of his pencil. ‘Somebody picks it up …’

  ‘And bye bye fifteenth floor.’ Swann pursed his lips.

  Westbrook looked at Swann. ‘Box’ve come up with a nominal.’

  ‘You want me in the squad room?’

  Westbrook shook his head. ‘Got another job for you.’

  Swann squinted at him.

  ‘Where’s Webb?’

  ‘Throwing sherry, Guv’nor.’

  Westbrook looked blank. ‘What?’

  ‘Los Remos Bar. His Spanish drinker. They’ve got some promotion on. He’s a dab hand with the long spoon.’

  ‘You mean there’s Spanish totty there.’

  Swann grinned at him.

  George Webb threw sherry. He stood on the chequer-board parquet floor with his feet slightly apart as he spooned the sherry high and dropped it in the glass. For the umpteenth time tonight he did not spill a drop. The Gonzalez Byas rep watched him, a broad smile on crimson lips; thick dark hair ebbed against the shoulders of her waist-length braided jacket. Skintight leggings and boots. She looked as though she had just come from the Bull Ring.

  He woke next to her in the morning and tasted stale sherry on his breath. She lay on her back, hair scattering over the pillow, the duvet gathered just above her pelvis. The dark swell of her nipples was easy.

  Webb groaned and rolled over. He should have gone home last night. He really should have gone home. From the pile of his clothes on the chair his pager bleeped. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. Drink swelled in his belly and he burped, then rubbed his eyes again. His head thumped as he moved to the pile of clothes and looked at the face of his pager.

  He put on jeans and stretched his polo shirt over his head. Maria was still sleeping and he fought the urge to bend and kiss her one last time. Instead he sat on the floor, took the phone from the table and dialled SO13. He got the Ops room on the sixteenth floor.

  ‘George Webb, Harry. Put me through to Westbrook will you.’

  The line clicked and then the ice of Westbrook’s voice bit into his flesh.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Wasted, Guv. Show me a day’s self-inflicted.’

  He heard Westbrook laugh. ‘No chance, Webby. You don’t have days off for hangovers. Get your arse in here. I’ve got a job for you.’

  Webb sat where he was and gazed longingly at exposed Spanish nipple. He sighed and hung up the phone.

  Vanner spoke to the Drug Squad team at Campbell Row. He and Jimmy had driven by the amusement arcade on Uxbridge Road and spotted both Stepper-Nap’s Mercedes and Young Young’s Rover. They had got nowhere with the doctor so far. That morning Jimmy had been on the phone to his informant in Jamaica who told them that Stepper-Nap’s brother was organising another shipment. So far he had no date or carrier but the word was on the street. He would call when he found out the times.

  ‘He that good—your snout, Jim?’ Sammy McCleod asked.

  ‘Not let me down so far.’

  ‘So we need a plane, an airport and a patsy.’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Pretty Boy organises the collections. He’ll send Jig or someone to pick up the girls.’

  ‘We’ll set up a rolling plot,’ Vanner said. ‘Pick them up and follow them wherever they go. The snout in Winchester gave us the doctor. If they go there then Stepper’ll get involved.’ He looked at Jimmy. ‘That right?’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Likes to supervise those himself.’

  China grinned. ‘Maybe he likes to watch.’

  Vanner tapped the photograph of Young Young sitting with Carmel they had blown up on the copier. ‘We might get another angle,’ he said.

  ‘Somebody giving him up?’ Anne asked.

  Vanner shook his head. ‘Not Young Young. I
doubt we’ll get to him before Jimmy Carter does. No. The girl, Carmel. She’s got a ground-floor flat on Radcliffe Road.’ He looked at Jimmy.

  Jimmy stood up. ‘Stepper-Nap,’ he said. ‘The Don. He’s a diplomatic bastard for all his other faults. He’s been at pains to keep the Governor Generals, that’s a Yardie Massive from Tottenham, out of his patch. He’s a British Black but his Jamaican connections are good. His brother organises the coke coming over from his nightclub in Kingston. The local plod is on to him but he pays them off.

  ‘He uses Carmel’s flat to house illegal Jamaicans as a favour to the Tottenham posse. That keeps them sweet and his manor is left alone. The lad that Young Young smacked at Jimmy Carter’s is Holden Biggs. He’s an illegal that immigration are trying to catch. He stayed at Carmel’s for a while when he landed. That’s where he got wrong with Young Young. I don’t know what went down between them but it doesn’t take much. The hammering he dished out will cause Stepper a problem. How big I don’t know, but it’ll be problem.’

  Anne looked blank. ‘What’s this got to do with Carmel?’

  ‘Plug is looking to bust her,’ Jimmy went on.

  ‘Carver?’ Sammy curled his lip.

  ‘The same.’

  Jimmy grinned at Vanner as Sammy sat shaking his head. ‘He wants to spin Carmel’s flat the next time he gets word that she’s holding. If Stepper’s looking to sort things with Tottenham she might be doing that sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Walks a fine line this Daddy,’ China said.

  Vanner leaned on the desk. ‘Immigration can’t do a turn on Carmel without us knowing. The address is flagged to Jimmy and I’ve had words with the AIU Guv’nor who’s had words with Plug’s bosses. They won’t move without us knowing about it.’

  ‘So we sit in on it, Guv?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Yes. When they nick Carmel we’ll have words with her—see what kind of a deal we can do. In the meantime we keep tabs on the word from Jamaica and keep up the OP at Pretty Boy’s address.’

  Stepper-Nap sat in his front room with his youngest child on his lap. He swirled the ends of his fingers through the boy’s matted, curling hair and looked at the TV screen without seeing it. Pretty Boy had been on the phone asking about the load due from Jamaica. Ginger Bill had made up the final batch now and it was already on the street. Pretty Boy was anxious to move. Stepper sat now in the semi-stillness of the room while his son wriggled on his lap and giggled at the antics of the cartoon characters on the TV. Stepper’s big flat face was still, though lines edged his brow in a frown. Pretty Boy troubled him, gathering his own troops in the background. Young Young had made that situation much worse and he had to move on the new market soon. But Young Young, the brainless prick, might’ve fucked that up for good. Holden Biggs was a turd with a mouth and Young Young ought to know better. Jimmy Carter of all people. Why couldn’t it have been a pub or the street or something?