Suddenly at Home

by Graham Ison

  ‘That’s ripper,’ said Kate, ‘but the one thing they haven’t told us is where we can find her.’

  ‘We might get lucky,’ said Dave. ‘If Chantal Flaubert has a passport, the Belgians will have a photograph of her on record. If they’re prepared to send us a copy, we could do worse than circulate it in the national press.’

  Linda Mitchell smiled. ‘I thought of that, too, Dave,’ she said. ‘They’ve agreed to send us a copy. It should be with you this afternoon sometime. But now, if you’ll excuse me,’ she added as she stood up, ‘I’ve an engagement party to attend.’

  ‘Give our congratulations to your granddaughter, Linda, and thanks for everything you’ve done,’ I said. ‘You obviously know the right people in the right places.’

  ‘Don’t you, Harry?’ said Linda. And pointing silently towards the commander’s office, did a back kick with one leg and winked as she swept out of the door.

  I still couldn’t believe she was a grandmother.

  I treated Kate and Dave to lunch at my favourite Italian restaurant and even paid for a taxi back to the office, such was my euphoria at being convinced that we were about to solve the murders of Dirk Cuyper, Victor Downs and Ram Mookjai.

  As we walked into the incident room, Colin Wilberforce handed me an envelope covered with important-looking seals. ‘An official at the Belgian Embassy sent for the Diplomatic Protection Group liaison inspector and asked him to get this to you ASAP, sir. A DPG motorcyclist arrived with it about five minutes ago.’

  ‘I wonder why the embassy got involved.’

  ‘Apparently it was sent by diplomatic bag this morning, sir,’ said Wilberforce. ‘According to the DPG bloke it’s the safest way, and these DPG blokes know about such things.’

  I adjourned to my office, and called for Kate and Dave to join me. The envelope from the embassy contained an A5-sized photograph of Chantal Flaubert and all the details about her that the Belgians held in their official records.

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ I said, and handed the photograph to Dave. ‘Anyone you know?’

  ‘The cunning bitch,’ Dave said, and passed the photo to Kate.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Kate exclaimed, and handed back the photograph.

  ‘At least we know where to find her,’ said Dave, ‘but how do we go about it? Although we never thought so at the time, I reckon she’ll now have to be regarded as armed and dangerous. I suppose we’ll need the full circus.’

  ‘I reckon so,’ I said. ‘Get this photograph reproduced urgently. I want a copy to be given to each officer on the team, but make sure that DS Carpenter and DC Appleby get one first. They’re doing day duty in Cuyper’s apartment.’

  ‘I know … sir,’ said Dave. ‘I’ll put it in hand straight away.’

  ‘Oh, and get one to Mark Hodgson, the concierge at Cockcroft Lodge, also as a matter of urgency.’

  Despite Dave’s plea that we ought to ‘nick the bitch ASAP’, it would not be possible to make the arrest before the morning of Thursday, if then. The reason was the need to coordinate the various units that would of necessity be involved in the operation, and that takes time. I agreed with Kate that if our suspect was ruthless enough to have murdered three people and at once proved that she was an expert pistol shot, care must be taken in arresting her. There was little doubt in my mind that she would not be taken easily, and I didn’t want any police officer or any member of the public to be killed or even wounded. Furthermore, I would prefer that this woman be taken alive and unharmed.

  The main people to be involved, apart from our own, were members of the Tactical Firearms Unit. This meant liaising first with one of their inspectors, who would assess the situation. He would then pass it upwards for a superintendent to look at, and if he gave the green light we were in business. The local police would have to be informed and a request made for road closures while the operation was carried out. All in all, it differed somewhat from the ‘good old days’ when you knocked on a suspect’s front door and told him to put his boots on because he was nicked.

  But before any of these preparations and the concomitant endless briefings took place there was one vital enquiry to be made, and I sent Kate Ebdon and Dave Poole to make it. And as it turned out, it was as well that I did.

  At half past eleven on Wednesday morning, Kate and Dave returned to the office.

  ‘It was a blow out,’ said Kate.

  ‘What d’you mean, a blow out?’

  ‘To coin an apt phrase, guv,’ said Dave, ‘the bird has flown.’

  ‘Dammit!’ I exclaimed. ‘We’ve got her phone number, Dave. Give it a try.’ I pushed my telephone across the desk.

  Dave tapped out the number and listened only briefly before replacing the receiver. ‘It’s gone to a message answering service,’ he said. ‘I reckon she’s had us over.’

  ‘Dammit!’ I said for the second time.

  ‘I’ve got another line of enquiry, guv,’ continued Dave. ‘Give me a couple of minutes to make a phone call.’

  ‘Use this phone,’ I said.

  ‘I need to look up the number.’

  Ten minutes later, Dave returned and handed me a piece of paper. ‘That’s where she is, guv’nor.’

  ‘Where the hell is Greenham?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a village in Somerset, not far from Wellington.’

  ‘I don’t even know where that is. Which police force covers the Somerset area?’

  ‘Er, the Avon and Somerset Police … sir.’

  ‘I shall make enquiries of the aforementioned police force,’ I said, ignoring Dave’s veiled sarcasm. ‘Incidentally, how the hell did you find that out so quickly?’

  ‘My informants are many and various,’ said Dave mysteriously.

  The Somerset constable assigned the task had not been a police officer for very long, and the excitement of being involved in an enquiry for Scotland Yard, albeit on the very periphery, had inflated his ego to the extent that he had become a little blasé. And the instruction that he was to wear plain clothes had only served to add to the perceived importance of what he was doing. Unfortunately, he had not yet had time to acquire those essential tools of the experienced police officer: local knowledge and the innate suspicion known as copper’s nose.

  He had been ordered by his inspector not to knock on the door of the house where the woman in whom Scotland Yard had an interest was supposed to be living, but to make what are known euphemistically as ‘local enquiries’. He alighted from his unmarked police car at eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning, and went to the house opposite the one where the suspect was thought to reside.

  ‘Good morning, sir. I’m a police officer.’ The young constable discreetly displayed his warrant card.

  ‘And I s’pose you’ve come to arrest me for summat else I ain’t done. Again.’ That hostile greeting came from a man some fifty years of age. He was scruffily dressed in an old tweed jacket, a torn striped shirt with no collar, moleskin trousers and heavy boots. And, as he always did, indoors or out, he was wearing an old cloth cap. This surly individual was no friend of the police and regarded the officer with grave suspicion. There was a good reason: he had several convictions for poaching, and fishing in privately owned streams, and considered that the police who had charged him on those occasions to have been overzealous.

  ‘I’m making enquiries on behalf of the Metropolitan Police, sir,’ began the constable importantly. Had he known of the man’s previous convictions and reputation, he would not have approached him in the first place.

  ‘Oh ah!’ exclaimed the man. The Somerset vernacular could have meant something or nothing, depending on the recipient’s interpretation. He raised a dirty forefinger to scratch at the three days of stubble that adorned his chin.

  ‘Would you happen to know if this woman has just moved into the house opposite, sir?’ the constable asked naively, and produced a photograph.

  ‘Oh ah! I think she be there right enough, Constable,’ said the man, scratching his chin again. �
��Be about a week since, I wouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir.’ The constable put the photograph back in his pocket, turned and took a pace or two. Then he paused and retraced his steps. ‘I’d be obliged if you didn’t mention my visit to the lady if you happen to see her, sir.’ Given the sensitivity of the enquiry, it was unfortunate that the constable had failed to recognize that a man who expressed anti-police sentiments from the outset was not to be relied upon. But as has been said, he was not too experienced in either police work or indeed the broader ways of the world. He scribbled a few words in his notebook, then drove back to Wellington.

  Standing in his doorway, the poacher watched the policeman depart and then crossed the road to the house opposite. He banged on the door, and when the woman answered he told her what had just transpired.

  Back at Wellington police station, the constable sat down and wrote a brief report for an officer called Detective Chief Inspector Brock of the Murder Investigation Team at New Scotland Yard. That done, he stared dreamily out of the window for a moment or two. Chewing the end of his ballpoint pen, he wondered whether to apply for a transfer to the Metropolitan Police.

  I received the report from the Avon and Somerset Police at two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon.

  ‘She’s there,’ I said to Kate and Dave. ‘Now is when it begins to get complicated.’

  ‘Are you going to let the locals arrest her, guv?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Not likely. It’s not that I don’t trust them to do their job properly, but there are always complications. I want to interrogate this woman when we have her in custody, but if local officers caution her just to be on the safe side, I’m stymied. If we arrest her, I needn’t caution her until I decide to charge her, as I must once I’m satisfied that there is sufficient evidence to do so.’

  ‘I rather think we knew all that … sir,’ said Dave. ‘But what do we do now?’

  ‘We tell Somerset that we’re coming down to effect the arrest, and would appreciate local firearms support as the suspect is believed to be armed and dangerous.’

  ‘I can see why you said it begins to get complicated,’ said Kate.

  ‘I think we need to bring out the big guns,’ I said.

  ‘Like the DAC, guv?’ queried Dave.

  ‘Exactly so. I’ll get across to the Yard right now.’

  I made a phone call to Fiona, the DAC’s secretary, and after a brief chat with the boss she told me to come over straight away.

  ‘It looks as though you’re near to wrapping up this job, Harry. Have a pew.’ The DAC gestured to an armchair and sat down in the one facing me. ‘So, what can I do?’

  I explained the problem of involving the Avon and Somerset Police. It was not that I had any concerns at all about their efficiency, but more that when two police forces work together their officers have to be fully aware of everybody’s role. Otherwise an operation of this sort can go disastrously wrong. And that’s why I needed the DAC’s intervention: to smooth the waters.

  ‘Who do you intend taking with you, Harry?’

  ‘DI Ebdon and DS Poole, guv’nor.’

  ‘Good choice.’ The DAC was not a man to mess about. Or to be messed about with. He buzzed his secretary. ‘Get me the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset, Fiona, please.’

  The DAC had spoken to the Somerset chief, who it turned out was an old friend. I got the impression that the DAC knew most people who were likely to be able to assist him when the necessity arose.

  The upshot was that the arrest had been scheduled for the following day, Thursday. It was now thirteen days since the murder of Dirk Cuyper, and five days after Downs’s and Mookjai’s murders.

  It was 175 miles to Wellington police station, where we were due to meet the local officers assigned to support the arrest. Dave’s usual ‘positive’ driving got us there in just under three hours and we arrived at ten o’clock.

  The superintendent who was to oversee matters introduced himself and asked me to brief the armed backup officers. I told them precisely what we intended doing and told them that Kate, Dave and I were also armed, just so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding. I showed the superintendent the arrest warrant which I’d obtained the previous day from the Chief Magistrate at Westminster. We didn’t really need one, but the DAC had suggested that everyone would be happier if we had one in our possession.

  With the armed support team’s vehicle leading the way, we drove out to Greenham and stopped just out of sight of the cottage where Chantal Flaubert had been reported as living. Kate and I walked up the path and knocked at the door, while a number of armed officers deployed themselves covertly, ready to rush in at the first sign of opposition from the Belgian woman.

  There was no reply despite our knocking several times.

  ‘What d’you think, Mr Brock?’ asked the superintendent when we’d retreated for a quick conference.

  ‘If you’re agreeable, sir,’ I said, ‘I think we should break in. The warrant empowers us to do so, and for all we know our suspect might’ve committed suicide.’

  ‘I agree,’ the superintendent said, signalled to the inspector in charge of the armed response unit and issued a number of instructions.

  Two officers in protective riot gear raced up the path and smashed in the front door with a rammer. Another six armed officers swarmed into the house and spread out with shouts of ‘Police’.

  After a few minutes a sergeant appeared and spoke to his inspector, who then joined the superintendent and me.

  ‘The house is empty, sir,’ said the inspector, ‘and according to my sergeant it appears to have been vacated in something of a hurry.’

  The superintendent turned in time to see the man who lived opposite standing in his doorway, hands in pockets and a broad smile on his face.

  ‘I’ll just have a word with that chap, Mr Brock. He’s one of our local poachers.’ And crossing the road, said, ‘Well, Jethro, did you think that I’d brought all these officers just to arrest you?’

  ‘I bain’t been a-poaching, if that’s what you means, mister.’

  ‘Do you know if the woman who lives across the road has moved, Jethro?’

  ‘Ay, I reckon,’ said Jethro. ‘Yesterday afternoon it were, not long after that young copper come here of the morning a-showing her photey around.’

  ‘Did he actually call at her house, Jethro?’

  ‘No, mister. He only come here and said summat about them police up London wanting to have a word with her. Well, I thought I’d better let her know, being neighbourly like, so’s she could p’raps give them Scotland Yard chaps a call on that funny phone of hers, the one that ain’t got no wires attached to it. I mean to say, I was only a-helping the police, like.’

  ‘Very public-spirited of you,’ replied the superintendent through gritted teeth, and marched back to where the inspector was talking to his sergeant. ‘Find out the name of the PC who was making enquiries here yesterday and tell him I want to see him. Like now!’

  SIXTEEN

  It was a despondent group that gathered in the incident room on Friday morning. I had been so sure that we were about to lay hands on the elusive Chantal Flaubert that it was a huge disappointment to find she’d slipped though our fingers.

  At the far end of the room, Wilberforce replaced the receiver of his telephone just as I was wrapping up my briefing to the team and was on the point of taking Kate and Dave across the road for a cup of coffee.

  ‘That was a call from the DAC’s secretary, sir,’ said Wilberforce. ‘Would you ring him ASAP.’

  I told Kate and Dave to come into my office in case it was something that would affect them, and tapped out the DAC’s direct line number. He sympathized with me over the Somerset job going belly up, and suggested it was possible that Chantal Flaubert had now fled back to her native Belgium. He said that he had spoken to his contact in Brussels, who had undertaken to have enquiries made urgently, starting in the Knokke-le-Zoute area.

  When I’d finis
hed my conversation with the DAC, I told Kate and Dave what he’d said.

  ‘Very helpful,’ said Dave, ‘but it doesn’t really get us any further forward, does it?’

  ‘Not immediately, no. But if she has returned to Belgium, I’m sure the Belgian police will track her down.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to go through the whole extradition rigmarole, I suppose,’ said Kate.

  ‘I’m glad you volunteered for that, Kate. The DAC also suggested that we start preparing an application for a European arrest warrant, just in case the Belgians find this woman.’

  ‘How the hell do we do that?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ I said. ‘The best idea is to ring our contact at the Crown Prosecution Service and ask her.’

  ‘Thanks a bundle, guv,’ said Kate sarcastically. In common with most detectives, she would face up to a violent criminal without a second’s hesitation, but was horrified by the prospect of dealing with complex form-filling. Something detectives learn early in their career is that the letters CPS also stand for ‘copious paper submissions’.

  However, things were about to change.

  ‘Can I help you, madam?’ Mark Hodgson was standing in the doorway of the concierge’s office at the entrance to Cockcroft Lodge, contemplating what to do about lunch.

  ‘Oh, perhaps you can, sir.’ The woman who had been walking past was about five foot ten tall and had long Titian hair. She paused and retraced her steps. ‘I’m Doctor Saskia Cuyper, Mr Dirk Cuyper’s widow. I’ve only just arrived back in Belgium from the Congo and then came straight here. I am with Médecins Sans Frontières, you see. I have come to see about removing my husband’s belongings.’ The woman looked immeasurably sad. A tear trickled down her cheek and she shook her head irritably as if trying to dislodge it. ‘It was a terrible shock to learn that he was murdered, you know. There I am in Africa trying to save lives, and here in England my husband is shot to death. Where is the justice in that?’