Murder Ring (A DI Geraldine Steel Mystery)

by Leigh Russell

  Halfway through the morning, her phone rang. Her heart beat wildly, but it was only a call from the mortuary to say the pathologist wanted to see her.

  ‘Why me?’ she asked, although she knew Adam was away all day at a meeting. ‘Can’t he just speak to me on the phone?’

  ‘He said you’d ask that,’ the anatomical pathology technician replied. ‘He was very insistent that he wants you to come here. He said he has something that you’re going to find very interesting.’

  ‘Is it about David Lester?’

  ‘It’s a different body this time.’

  ‘Then it isn’t my case.’

  ‘He said he wants you to come in person, if possible. That’s all I know.’

  The technician was beginning to sound impatient.

  ‘Oh all right. I’m on my way. But I don’t see what all the mystery is about.’

  In spite of her irritation at the interruption, Geraldine was curious. If Miles wanted her to go to the mortuary that meant something was amiss. He liked to play guessing games, but he would never ask her to go and see him unless it was important. Normally, she would have been pleased that some development had come up while Adam was unavailable. Only today she did not want to be tied up at work. She tried Louise’s number one more time before setting off, but the line went straight to voicemail. Checking her mobile wasn’t on silent, she slipped it in her pocket so she would hear if it rang. In the car, she put the phone on the passenger seat to make sure she couldn’t miss a call, and set off.

  ‘This had better be worth dragging me all the way over here for,’ she grumbled to the young anatomical pathology technician who opened the door for her.

  ‘Don’t blame me,’ Jasmine smiled, ‘I just passed on the message. Miles is the one who insisted on getting you over here. How are you?’

  Geraldine gave an inane reply about things being fine. Nothing could be further from the truth. With a suspect they were unable to nail, and the disturbance about her mother, her life was a mess, her emotions spiralling out of control.

  ‘How about you? How’s life?’

  ‘Can’t complain,’ Jasmine replied, glancing down at a diamond ring sparkling on her left hand.

  ‘You’re engaged. Congratulations! When are you getting married?’

  Geraldine was afraid her enthusiasm sounded fake, but Jasmine grinned, eager to talk about her future plans.

  ‘We haven’t set a date yet, but probably next summer. There’s so much to organise.’

  Geraldine tried to feel pleased for the young woman standing in front of her, bubbling with excitement. It wasn’t that she envied Jasmine’s situation, only her happiness. She had felt the same bitterness about Celia’s pregnancy. Marriage and babies didn’t appeal to her in the slightest. She valued her independence too much to want to compromise with another adult, and loved her job too much to exchange it for baby food and nappies. But she wished she was the kind of woman who could bear to share her life and her home with someone else. Solitude wasn’t always liberating.

  ‘Miles is expecting you. I told him you were coming.’

  Geraldine pulled on a mask and went in, relieved to be back in familiar territory.

  Miles greeted her like an old friend. ‘How are you, Geraldine?’

  ‘Puzzled about why you dragged me all the way over here, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’ll find it worth the effort.’

  He smiled at her in anticipation of her reaction. Curiosity overcame her irritation.

  ‘What have you found?’

  Miles pointed to the body of a man. He was lying on his back, his face a livid white mask with dark eyes staring up at the ceiling. Apart from the neat incisions made by Miles, the torso was scarred with four nearly identical small wounds in a diagonal row across his chest.

  ‘He was found impaled on railings outside a bar round the corner from Oxford Street. He’d fallen from an upstairs window.’

  ‘So it was an accident?’

  ‘It certainly looked that way at first.’

  ‘At first –?’

  ‘Well, it’s true that he fell on to the railings, but there are a number of intriguing features here. First, and by no means least, is that one of these wounds is not what it seems to be.’ He pointed to one of the holes, close to the dead man’s heart. ‘Unlike the other wounds, this injury here wasn’t caused by a metal spike.’

  ‘Miles, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Look closely and you’ll see this is, in fact, a bullet wound.’

  ‘You’re joking. Bloody hell.’

  ‘Yes, I thought you’d be interested.’

  ‘It’s interesting, I’ll give you that. But it’s not my case, Miles. I’m already working on a case, another shooting, as you very well know.’

  ‘Yes, the body found in Wells Mews, not far from where this victim fell on the railings.’

  ‘Yes. It’s the same area, but it’s still a different case.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Like I said, things are not always what you might think.’

  ‘For goodness sake, will you stop talking in riddles, Miles, and tell me why you asked me to come here.’

  ‘The bullets match.’

  ‘What do you mean? What bullets? And what do they match?’

  ‘I didn’t want to say anything before it had been confirmed, but the same gun was used to kill David Lester and this chap here.’

  He tapped the dead man on the top of his head.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘There’s no doubt about it. Forensics have examined both bullets and they are positive they were fired from the same gun. I’m afraid we’ve lost a few days, as the initial assessment concluded this was an accidental death. He was drunk and stoned, and he did fall – or perhaps in the light of what we now know, he was dropped – out of a window and landed on railings. But as it was presumed accidental, we didn’t do the post mortem immediately. He was killed three days ago, on Saturday night.’

  ‘Shit. We’ll get the crime scene protected straight away, but it will have been hopelessly contaminated by now.’ She stared at the body. ‘So whoever killed David also had a crack at this poor guy. Presumably he was shot indoors, then chucked out of the window?’

  ‘Or dropped quite carefully to make sure he landed on the railings.’

  ‘Do you think that was deliberate?’

  ‘No, not necessarily. It could have been sheer luck that the shooting ended up looking like an accident.’

  ‘He looks young. Who is he?’

  ‘His name’s Luke Thomas. He was nineteen.’

  ‘Oh bloody hell.’

  ‘Indeed. Is that your phone?’

  As Geraldine snatched her mobile out of her pocket it stopped ringing. She recognised Louise’s number.

  ‘Do you want to take that?’ Miles asked.

  Geraldine hesitated. Then she looked at the young man lying on the slab in front of her.

  ‘What do we know about him? When did you say he was killed? And do we have the gun?’

  33

  BY THE TIME Geraldine was back, she was pleased to discover that Adam had returned. Quickly she brought him up to speed and he convened an emergency briefing. Having closed the bar where Luke was shot, Geraldine spent the next few hours scanning key statements taken on Saturday night after his death. The body had been found by a young man called Stan Bilton. She reread his account several times. He claimed he had been outside the back exit of the bar, smoking. He was standing right beside the railings, when the body had fallen next to him. His statement said little more than that. Nearly three days had elapsed since then. Geraldine was worried he would have forgotten exactly what he had seen.

  ‘It’s hardly the kind of thing you forget,’ Sam pointed out.

  ‘I don’t know. He was most likely pissed, and probably confused with the shock of it all.’

  However good Stan’s memory, it was a pity he hadn’t been thoroughly questioned on Saturday, but at the time no one h
ad realised they were dealing with a murder. It was extremely annoying, but they had to make the best of the situation. Hoping for the best, Geraldine set out to speak to Stan. She found him at his place of work in a fast food cafe along the Holloway Road. The smell of grease hit her as she walked in. The air was thick with the smell of sausages and bacon. Trying to take shallow breaths, she strode up to the counter.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Stan Bilton.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Flashing her identity card, she repeated her request.

  ‘Stan!’

  A short man with a sallow complexion turned and nodded. ‘What?’

  ‘This cop wants you.’

  ‘What?’

  At last Geraldine escaped the stench to stand outside the back door of the cafe with the witness. He offered her a cigarette which she refused.

  ‘Do you mind if I do?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  It was better than the smell inside the cafe.

  ‘Is it about Saturday night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  Slowly, with frequent faltering, he recounted what he had seen. ‘I heard him fall before I saw him,’ he finished.

  ‘What exactly did you hear? I’d like to know every little detail. Close your eyes and imagine you’re back there, outside the bar, having a smoke. What did you hear? Tell me everything.’

  He frowned. ‘Like what?’

  Geraldine hesitated to put ideas in his head. ‘Did you hear anything at all before the body fell? Did any cars drive past, or backfire nearby? Was there any yelling? Anything at all?’

  He frowned. ‘I could hear the thumping of music from inside the bar. There were no cars and no one walked by, not until after he fell.’

  ‘What did you hear when he fell?’

  ‘There was this kind of whishing sound, and a sort of thump. And then I opened my eyes and saw the poor bugger stuck there. He wasn’t moving. I thought he must have passed out with the shock. I didn’t know he was dead. I mean, there wasn’t loads of blood spurting out everywhere, nothing like that. He just lay there, without moving. He didn’t even groan or anything. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it was kind of weird how he just lay there without making a sound.’

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t hear anything else?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say but that’s all I can remember. I mean, I was just there. I didn’t see him fall, I just opened my eyes and there he was, stuck on the railings.’

  The other two witnesses on the scene before the emergency services arrived could offer even less information than Stan. They had turned up just after the body had landed on the railings, and had neither heard nor seen anything that could help further the enquiry. Geraldine turned her attention to the bar staff. They didn’t keep a list of customers; they just checked ID on the door to exclude anyone under eighteen.

  ‘We’re very careful about that,’ the manager said.

  Geraldine had joined him in his small office upstairs. There was a spacious open-plan bar downstairs, while on the first floor there were toilets, a smaller terrace bar and the manager’s office. Luke had fallen, or been pushed, from an upstairs window. Scene of crime officers were examining the two windows in the toilets, which were located immediately above the railings, to establish which one Luke had fallen from. As the small window in the manager’s office didn’t look down on the back of the building, they knew Luke had not fallen from there. The manager’s eyes almost disappeared beneath his thick black eyebrows as he glared at Geraldine from behind a small pine desk.

  ‘Now when are you lot going to be finished, only we open in a couple of hours and it’s not good for business to have a team of uniformed policemen and women stomping around the place.’

  ‘You won’t be opening tonight,’ Geraldine replied.

  ‘What? You are kidding me. You can’t close us down. We haven’t broken any law. We’re very strict about who we let in.’

  ‘We’re not doing this lightly, or from choice, but we need to examine your premises from top to bottom –’

  ‘Why? Some geezer got pissed and fell out of the window. It’s tragic, but it was an accident. The police were here on Saturday and the investigation’s over. You had your chance to look around then. We were closed all day on Sunday. You’ve got no right to even come back here now. If you don’t leave right away, and take all your bloody people with you, I’m calling my lawyer. You’re not going to stop us opening this evening and that’s final.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple. The post mortem revealed new evidence that’s led to the opening of a murder enquiry. We’ll be out of here as soon as we can, but you may not be able to open your upstairs bar tonight, and in any case, even if we’ve finished in there, no one will be able to access the toilets at all for a while. Now, if you’re sure there’s nothing more you can tell me about Saturday night, I’d like to use your office to speak to your staff individually. You can wait downstairs in the entry hall, but no one is going to be allowed in the downstairs bar until we’ve finished there. Thank you.’

  ‘I can’t allow this –’ the manager blustered, but his shoulders sagged in defeat.

  ‘Have you given my sergeant the contact details for your staff?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Good. You can send them in, one at a time, as they arrive.’

  34

  APART FROM THE bouncer on the door and the manager, five people had been working at the bar on Saturday night. There should have been six, two behind the bar upstairs, and four downstairs, but one member of staff had called in sick. The manager grumbled that it wasn’t unusual for his staff to let him down at the last minute. So there had been three staff and the manager working downstairs, and the bar upstairs had been manned by two members of staff. The manager wasn’t able to say exactly who had been upstairs at the time of what he insisted on referring to as ‘the accident’. The staff had taken it in turns to work upstairs. A constable had questioned each of the bar staff in turn on Saturday evening after the incident. None of them had been able to recall for certain which of them had been upstairs at the time Luke had been shot. They wouldn’t have been able to see the door to the toilets from behind the bar anyway, so it probably wouldn’t have helped to have found out who had been upstairs.

  Geraldine had read the initial report from Saturday but she wasn’t prepared to leave it at that. She was keen to try and discover who had been working in the upper bar around midnight. Whoever had been there might have heard or seen something suspicious. The first member of staff she spoke to was called Katy. Strolling into the office, narrow hips swaying, she could have been about seventeen, although close up she looked closer to thirty. She had bright pink hair and was wearing silver eye shadow and matching nail varnish on her short nails. She was a pretty girl with good teeth who smiled a lot.

  ‘Yes, I did a stint upstairs,’ she told Geraldine. ‘We all did. There were two of us.’ She smiled. ‘Marco goes ballistic when people don’t turn up for work but we’re cool because he pays us extra to cover.’

  She was adamant she had noticed nothing unusual on Saturday evening, just customers having fun. If anything it had been a fairly quiet night, because it had rained earlier on.

  After Katy, Geraldine spoke to a young man called Rafe who told her he was twenty-nine. Sharp featured and neatly dressed, he sat awkwardly on the edge of a chair, fidgeting with his cuffs. In answer to every question he shook his head, his bright eyes never moving from hers.

  ‘No, I never heard anything strange that night, and I never seen any arguments. There was nothing going on. It was a dull night, not even busy, especially for a Saturday.’

  Geraldine showed him a photograph of Luke and asked if he recognised him. Rafe shook his head.

  ‘I never seen him before in all my life,’ he said, so earnestly that Geraldine suspected he was lying.
<
br />   ‘Are you quite sure you didn’t see him in the bar on Saturday? Look very carefully.’

  ‘I never seen him before,’ Rafe repeated.

  The third barman looked about twenty. Wearing a smart jacket over dark jeans, he was tall and good looking. By contrast to Rafe, Jack had an air of relaxed confidence that bordered on arrogance. He answered her questions without any hesitation. Like his colleague, Katy, he freely admitted that he had worked upstairs on Saturday evening. Like her, he couldn’t remember exactly when he had been upstairs and insisted he had neither seen nor heard anything untoward. The other two barmen were older than the first three. They told the same story. Like Rafe, they had been working downstairs all evening and, like their colleagues, they had noticed nothing unusual at the time of the shooting.

  It had been a wearing day. For all her hard work, Geraldine hadn’t managed to advance the investigation at all. No one had heard a shot, and no one had noticed Luke arguing with anyone shortly before he was killed. In fact, no one admitted to even recognising Luke from the photograph Geraldine had brought in.

  ‘Someone must have served him,’ Geraldine said, as Sam drove them back to Hendon. ‘His blood alcohol level was way over the limit. He was completely pissed before he was shot. Why are they all lying about having served him? It doesn’t make sense. Do you think Marco warned them not to say anything? And if so, why?’

  ‘To get rid of us,’ Sam answered promptly. ‘He doesn’t want anything to do with this. The less they tell us about any sort of involvement, the sooner we’ll leave them alone, or so he thinks. Anyway, Luke may well not have gone up to the bar. Someone else might have been buying, or he could have been drinking somewhere else, and only just arrived there. It’s possible he walked in and went straight upstairs to the toilet, and met his killer before he’d even had a drink there.’

  Back at the station, Geraldine didn’t accompany Sam back inside straight away. She didn’t want to make a private call in the office knowing Neil might walk in at any time. She watched Sam stride ahead of her towards the door, before walking back towards the road.