by Matt Hilton
Briefly she wondered if Mel Scanlon was back at the nick yet, and how far she’d got with the CCTV evidence she hoped to find.
‘I’m working on a lead that might prove the conspiracy. If it pans out I’ll be making arrests soon.’
‘Arrests! I don’t give a shit for arrests!’ He raged towards her, and stopped only inches from her face, his teeth bared. ‘ I want him. I want Jermaine Robson DESTROYED!’
‘Destroyed how?’
‘You know how! Robson did this to me. And do you know why? Because he wants what was mine, but he didn’t have the balls to try to take it from me in person. Now I’m out of the way he wants to move in and take over my patch, my business…everything that was mine. Everything I fought and worked hard for all those years. Well you have to make sure he gets none of it. Do you hear me? Do you understand what I want now? If you want me to uphold my side of the bargain you have to give me what I ask.’ He glared at her, waiting for it to sink in. ‘I’ll give you the Fell Man, but I want Jermaine Robson’s head served to me on a fucking plate.’
‘You’re asking for something I can’t give you.’
‘It’s your choice, Kezza. Say ta-ta to the Fell Man, bitch, and say hello to your new bosom buddy Swain-o.’
‘I’m a police officer, I can’t just—’
‘What, chase someone onto a roof they just happen to accidentally-on-purpose slip off? Come on, you know as well as I do that unfortunate accidents happen all the time. I’m sure there’s enough nounce up in that detective’s brain of yours to come up with a plan.’
‘No. I won’t do it. I’m not capable of murder.’
He snorted in disbelief. ‘Tell me that again once I set your hands on the Fell Man.’
This time, she didn’t argue.
29
Swain allowed her the privacy to complete her ablutions, a huge relief on one hand, but it also suggested the decision to go along with his demand was a foregone conclusion to him. She hadn’t agreed to his terms, never would. Not to the extreme length he expected. Yes, she’d do everything in her power to solve the case and ensure the culprits were punished. She owed as much to the Ghedi family, but not to Erick Swain. She would not, no way, no how, be pushed into committing murder for him!
Interestingly, when mentally making her stand, Swain had not reappeared to rant and rave, but stayed wherever it was he retreated to when not spying on her. If he was a product of her unconscious id, then surely there was no thought she could keep from him? Or she was the victim of a double bluff of her own machination. Maybe he thought his argument was strong enough without further haranguing, because when he’d suggested she would happily murder the Fell Man she hadn’t experienced the same sense of discomfort as at the thought of killing Jermaine Robson. In fact a thrill had tingled through her body and left her hot and slightly breathless at the possibility. Where she held the towel she’d formed fists so tight it had been an effort to uncurl her fingers after Swain vacated the bathroom.
Adam didn’t return before she left the house. It was dark, and the wind swirling down her street held a promise of winter. She pulled up the hood on her duffel coat, donned over a fresh trouser suit and blouse, and clutched her handbag under her left elbow. She approached Eel Brook Common kicking through drifts of fallen leaves as she made for her car, already holding her key. Broken twigs and leaves had accumulated on its bonnet and windscreen, wet and shiny under the dim glow from a nearby lamppost. Overhead the branches of a tree swayed and groaned in the breeze, scattering more autumnal detritus on its roof.
Inside the car it felt damp, and a film of condensation immediately coated the windows when her breath hit the colder glass. She started the engine, turned the blowers to their highest setting and the windscreen wipers going. The wipers picked up the mulch of leaf and twigs, streaking dirty arcs over the windscreen. She turned up their rhythm and the leaf litter was thrown aside. She wiped the moisture off the windscreen with the back of her hand, and immediately regretted it. Now the glass was smeared inside and out. She’d have to wait before driving off, because with the lack of visibility she could end up crashing, or worse, knocking over a pedestrian. While she waited, she pulled out her phone and rang Mel Scanlon.
‘I was just about to ring you, ma’am,’ Mel announced the instant she answered the phone. ‘You won’t believe what I’ve got to show you.’
‘You found something?’ In that moment all thoughts of Erick Swain, Girl, the Fell Man, and even Sally, were cast by the wayside. She hadn’t given voice to her suspicions, but throughout all the distractions she’d suffered, her detective’s mind had been working away in the background, piecing together clues, formulating a theory, and all the while clinging to the hope that something concrete would present as evidence. ‘Did you get the Skyline on tape near the compound?’
She only required one CCTV image showing Zane McManus meeting with Funky and his pals to tie the plot together. For the scheme to frame Erick Swain to work, Jermaine Robson had needed an inside man. Somebody with free access to come and go to Swain’s house must have supplied the key to the lock-up, then returned it to its hook in the kitchen, as if Swain had absent-mindedly returned it after burning out the getaway car. Somebody must have been given the murder weapon to reload with bullets daubed with Swain’s fingerprints, bury the incriminating evidence in his garden, then make that anonymous telephone call informing the police where to find it. Swain had never been expected to die, but on such damning evidence, he’d have been looking at a lengthy prison sentence. With Swain out of the way, it would be a simple enough task for Robson’s Nine Elms Crew to steamroll their way over Swain’s territory and for Robson to take it for his own.
‘Ma’am,’ said Mel, and Kerry heard the victorious chattering of her team in the background, ‘You wanted some actionable evidence, well we might just have hit the mother lode.’
‘You can see Zane meeting with Funky and the others?’
‘Better than that,’ said Mel.
What could be better? ‘Don’t keep me on tenterhooks, for Christ’s sake. Just tell me.’
Danny Korba’s voice broke in. ‘Are you coming in to see what we’ve found or not? We need your input on this before we do anything else.’ He was like a conspirator, cajoling her under false pretenses to attend her own surprise party. ‘You have to see this with your own eyes, boss.’
‘I’m on my way now.’
She turned from a cautious driver worried about getting in a wreck, to a speed freak prepared to take reckless chances with red lights and the narrowest of gaps between slower moving traffic. What would ordinarily take her twenty minutes to drive was accomplished in under ten. She hit the ramp into the subterranean parking garage so fast that the front bumper scraped the concrete before her car levelled out. She abandoned her car in a space reserved for visiting SCO19 vehicles. Jogged through the nick, ignoring startled or bemused looks from her uniformed colleagues and shouldered open the door to the GaOC office. Wild-eyed and windswept, she stared expectantly at her team who’d all clustered around Mel’s workstation: somebody had got the brews in, the on-duty copper’s celebratory drink of choice, with the foresight of grabbing her a mug of tea too. They all grinned so hard they’d need their jaws slackened with a crowbar afterwards.
‘Let me see,’ she ordered without preamble.
Mel had already prepped her computer screen, angling it out the way she had earlier. Tony Whittle danced aside to make way for Kerry, sprightly for a stockily built bloke. Korba leaned in alongside her, and when she glanced at him he waggled his brows to build anticipation. She returned her attention to the screen, even as Glenn Scott pushed a mug of tea into her hands. She ignored the steaming brew.
‘This footage isn’t from the compound’s official security system,’ Mel quickly explained. ‘A renter, Mr Torrance, installed his own cameras after his adjacent lock-up kept getting vandalised, and the images from the compound’s security cameras proved too distant and grainy to identify the culp
rits. He mounted a hidden camera he could remotely access from his laptop to keep a discreet eye on the place. I’d bet Swain originally chose that lock-up because it was far from the security cameras and had no idea this one was there. This little bunch of scumbags certainly had no idea of its presence. Torrance was reticent about giving me a look at his recordings when he heard I was a detective, but…’ Mel stopped, realising she was babbling. ‘Well, here it is.’
The quality of the footage was superb, in colour, and importantly it was date and time-stamped. The angle of the camera didn’t give a direct view of Swain’s lock-up; it had been placed for maximum coverage of the one rented by Mr Torrance. Yet the angle actually helped when Zane McManus’s Nissan Skyline drew to a halt directly below – purposefully leaving clear access to Swain’s lock-up so the Subaru could be driven out. Before he was even out of the driving seat, a tall dark-skinned man — unmistakably Ikemba Adefunke — moved into shot. Zane got out his car, and they bumped knuckles, clenched hands and gave a one-armed shoulder hug, like old buddies.
‘No audio?’ Kerry asked.
‘Picture only,’ Mel said.
‘It’ll do.’ Adrenalin flooded through Kerry, making her shiver.
On-screen Zane and Funky exchanged words, but even the best lip reader would be thwarted by the angle. Kerry didn’t need to hear them talking, the images were enough to prove the conspiracy. Two black men moved into frame.
‘Recognise them, boss?’ Korba still maintained a manic grin.
‘I do.’ It was the two young gang members they’d witnessed meeting with Funky outside his apartment block.
Glenn Scott placed two printed sheets of paper on the desk. Her team had been productive rather than waiting until her arrival before getting on with identifying the gunman and driver. She only glanced at the mugshots, before returning her attention to the video footage. A fifth man had joined the small gathering of plotters. He was cooler about greeting Zane, only offering a swift dip of his chin.
‘Jermaine Robson.’ Kerry’s whisper barely carried beyond her lips. ‘Christ, we’ve got him…’
Korba touched her wrist. ‘It’s not over yet, boss.’
Gloved-up, Zane handed over a car key and the one currently in an evidence bag down the hall, and Funky and one of the younger guys hurried off-screen. Their shadows painted the ground. From their shadows Kerry could tell they were opening the adjacent garage door. While they were busy moving the Subaru, Zane and Robson exchanged words, then the briefest of handshakes. Their display of friendship didn’t extend to their facial expressions or body language. Theirs was a deal based on mutual need. Funky must have locked the door after the other guy drove out the Subaru. He returned the key to Zane, who pushed it into an inside pocket — to be returned to the hook in Hettie’s kitchen — then Funky disappeared out of sight. The other young gangster joined Robson, and walked around the Skyline and stood by the front passenger door.
There was no view of the person inside the car, but evidently they had powered down the window. A gloved hand emerged, holding out an object bundled in a cloth. Without taking it, Robson unwrapped the cloth and Kerry’s view of the Webley Mk IV .38/200 Service revolver was excellent. Robson avoided touching the gun. He nodded at the young man beside him, who took it in his gloved hands, and quickly transferred it to his waistband. The gunman sloped off-screen towards where the Subaru Impreza waited for him. Robson directed some instructions towards where the Subaru must now be, before he leaned towards the passenger window of Zane’s Skyline. Even from the sharp angle, he could be seen smiling. He leaned deeper towards the window, intimately.
From within the car emerged a hand now devoid of gloves, and Kerry caught her breath. The sapphire engagement ring on her second finger was very identifiable. Then, as Robson ducked inside the window, that hand curled around the back of his neck to pull him into a lingering kiss. There was a hint of blond locks spilling from the window. On the other side of the car Zane shifted uncomfortably and turned his back on the show of affection. It was one thing plotting Erick Swain’s fall with their enemies, quite another to openly fraternize. Watching his cousin locking lips with Robson was asking too much of him.
‘Hettie?’ Kerry wondered aloud.
Who else could it be except for Hettie Winters?
When Kerry thought about it, the sniffer dog had reacted to the settee where Hettie had been sitting when the search warrant was executed at her home. It was she who’d probably reloaded the gun, while seated on the settee, after it was subsequently returned to her for burying, and she who had scattered the incriminating cartridges in the master bedroom. As she’d stated during interview, Hettie was ‘no good with maths’. Hearing that only two victims had been killed, she’d made the fatal miscalculation of reloading a single bullet, without first removing one from the cylinder: the three shells deliberately emptied from the revolver and dropped at the scene bore Swain’s fingerprints, as did the one she’d fed back in the gun. She trusted that Hettie had manipulated Swain into handling those bullets beforehand. Ensuring his prints were prominent on them, so they could be used as evidence to convict him.
On the occasions she’d spoken with Hettie, both in official interview and subsequently at her home, she’d found her cold, and had put down her behaviour to mild shock at her boyfriend’s death, and the dawning understanding that he was a child killer, but that wasn’t it. Hettie was a cold-hearted bitch, full stop. She had plotted with Swain’s rival to get rid of him. For what reason though: she and Robson were secret lovers?
‘No. Not my Hettie.’
While the others in the room waited for Kerry to absorb the surprising denouement, she had done the same with Erick Swain.
At some point he’d materialised to stand behind Mel Scanlon, as Porter had stood earlier. The DC was totally unaware of his presence, although Mel shivered a couple of times as if chilled. The look on Swain’s face was unrecognisable. Before this he had either been smarmy, cock-sure of himself, or snarling and snapping his teeth in rage. Now his expression could only be described as bereft. His mouth hung open, drooping at one side, and his eyes were, ironically, haunted. Slowly, he reared back, his eyelids screwing tight. Kerry tensed for the inevitable explosion.
It didn’t come.
Swain dematerialized, and again the only hint he’d been there was in the way Mel ran her palm over the short hairs on the back of her neck.
It was a relief that he’d left, because she wouldn’t be able to concentrate with him storming up and down the office, ranting about his betrayal. Hopefully discovering who was involved was enough to chase him off to wherever dark spirits like his belonged, expect she had one regret: he hadn’t given her the answers she wanted yet.
She’d previously wondered if once a person passed, if they became party to all the secrets of the universe. She’d entertained the notion that Swain could indeed point her at the Fell Man, and reveal to her Sally’s fate, through some metaphysical all-knowing, all-seeing talent. But Swain had never claimed to wield unearthly powers. All he’d claimed was that he knew things: ‘There are no secrets in the underworld. And by the underworld I’m not talking about fire and brimstone.’
Well, apparently he wasn’t as connected as he’d boasted, when he’d failed to notice that one of those plotting against him was his lover. Accepting his lie was wishful thinking, she had to consider if he’d been manipulating her to get what he wanted, without ever intending upholding his side of the bargain.
That was fine. She didn’t need Swain.
It was intuition that had led her to follow a different investigative path, and the work of her team under her determined guidance, that had discovered those behind the murders of Nala and Bilan Ghedi…not through being steered by a bloody ghost!
Paired up, her intuition and determination should lead to the capture of the Fell Man too. Erick Swain could go to hell.
She realised her team were still watching her. Who knew what emotions had played across her fe
atures in the past few seconds?
‘I take it DCI Porter’s unaware of the scale of this?’ She nodded towards the computer screen, on which Mel had frozen the picture.
‘We wanted you to see it first,’ said Korba, ‘so you can thumb your nose at him when you break the news.’
‘I’m not interested in one-upmanship.’ She placed down the mug of tea she’d forgotten she was holding. ‘I want every last one of those bastards arrested, but we still have to go at it the right way.’ Their arrests needed coordinating so none of them were tipped-off that she was coming for them. She took a quick glance over her shoulder, checking her boss hadn’t sneaked in the office. ‘He’s a pain in the arse, but we need Porter onside to organise things. Do we know if he’s still in the nick?’
Korba raised his wristwatch. ‘Are you kidding? It’s after seven. He’s at home with his feet up in front of the TV by now.’
She smiled and reached for the nearest phone. She didn’t mind disturbing his privacy. After all, everyone in the office faced a long, sleepless night ahead, so why should Porter be spared the inconvenience?
30
Knowing who she was after was one thing, but catching and arresting them all was another. It proved a logistical and resource heavy nightmare in fact. Six suspects required six different teams coordinating simultaneous raids on their individual home addresses, despite nobody expecting an arrest at each. Funky wasn’t home. Neither was Kingston James, identified as the driver of the Subaru Impreza, or Derrick Lewis, the man who’d accepted the gun from Hettie Winters, and most assuredly the slayer of the Ghedis. Jermaine Robson wasn’t home either. So, of the six, only two were grabbed in the initial raids. Zane McManus and Hettie were both found at her house, but bundled into separate vehicles for transportation to the nick to stop them colluding prior to their interviews. Searches were conducted at the home addresses of all six individuals, to turn up any evidence of the plot. All the while, Kerry was nervous. The minute the police descended on the first of those dwellings the news that a manhunt was underway flashed through the criminal networks and sent Robson and his cronies into hiding. With DCI Porter’s support she pulled from teams based at other stations throughout the city, and a second wave of raids was set in motion where the homes and premises of known associates of the Nine Elms Crew were targeted, though with no success.