Death Watch

by Deborah Lucy

  He really needed one of the night crews to find him before he disappeared so the crime car could follow him. Temple was parked up alongside a verge. He knew now he just had to wait to see if he surfaced somewhere. After only fifteen minutes, unable just to sit in his car, Temple decided to drive to Swindon, along the route he thought might have been taken by Turner.

  Before an hour had passed, there was a call from Control Room saying that a marked patrol car regularly parked at Leigh Delamere Services had the car in its sights. The driver had replaced a rear light. As the driver was kept under watch by uniformed colleagues, they made contact with the crime car, which was circling the streets of Swindon Old Town. By this time, Temple was in the vicinity. He called the crime car crew to pick him up en route to the motorway. As Temple got in the back, the driver flicked on the blue flashing lights ready for a high speed blue light run out to Leigh Delamere.

  The patrol car at Leigh Delamere reported that the Focus had left the services heading west, with Temple and the crime car heading towards it on the opposite side of the carriageway. As they got nearer to the vicinity, Temple ordered the car to cruise and turn off the blue lights flashing in the car’s grill, fearing that any speeding emergency vehicle would spook Turner. The crime car radioed ahead to traffic cars on the motorway to monitor exits between Junctions 17 and 16, to see if the Focus turned off. At the next junction, the crime car turned around and resumed the high speed pursuit.

  Temple knew that this was his final chance of detaining Turner and securing the evidence he needed to back his supposition that he was the murderer. The fact that he had now had most of the Swindon mobile resources in the pursuit of Turner wouldn’t go unnoticed by on-duty senior officers for very long and they would soon start to ask their arse-saving questions that wouldn’t necessarily be conducive to Temple reaching the best outcome. He knew he had to get an outcome before they started getting involved.

  The Focus remained on the motorway long enough for the crime car to gain ground. With the Focus in its sights, it slowed and pulled in behind a line of cars so that it could follow from a safe distance. It drove on past Junction 17. Detective Sergeant Charlie Eaton in the car with Temple asked him if he was sure he didn’t want the occupant stopped.

  ‘No, no, just follow. I need him to take us to wherever it is he’s going,’ Temple instructed.

  As the car sped along in the darkness and Temple considered the prospect of arrest, doubts began to spring into his mind; what did he actually have on this bloke? Harker and Sloper considered the prime suspect to be James and he was dead. What if they were right after all? He was a big muscular lad, maybe he did it – maybe he found Greta with someone else that night and lost it. All he had on Turner was a gut feeling that the creepy bastard had had Greta under surveillance for his own ends. But senior officers didn’t like gut feelings – a growing number of them would say there was no place for gut feelings in modern policing. What had nagged him was Maxwell not being given the photos of Greta and Marcus Hussain in Savernake Forest. Temple knew that if he had, the job would have been over, Turner’s work would have been completed. He’d deliberately prolonged the job because he liked what he saw. The more he thought of him, the stronger was his feeling that this was the right action.

  Junction 16 was looming and the Focus remained in the outside lane. The crime car remained in the same lane, four cars behind.

  Suddenly, the Focus swerved across the carriageway, causing other motorists to break hard. It sped down the slip road of the motorway. The crime car struggled to make the same manoeuvre. The brakes were slammed on due to a tight line of cars barring its way due to Turner’s quick action.

  ‘The bloke’s a lunatic,’ said the police driver.

  ‘He either had a quick change of mind or he’s surveillance aware and knows or thinks he’s being followed. Just don’t lose him. Get down that slip road,’ Temple ordered.

  The blue flashing lights in the grill of the crime car were deployed to force its way across the carriageway through the line of traffic. They went down the slip road and back into Swindon.

  ‘He could have gone off down the B4005,’ said Eaton, seeing there was no sign of the Focus immediately ahead.

  ‘Get on the radio for patrol cars to look out for it. I’ve got someone at Ramsbury, if that’s where he’s headed. Let’s just stick with Swindon, just see if he’s here somewhere.’ They continued on, driving down the dual carriageway.

  Temple realized that the darkness of the night actually enhanced Swindon. As he looked out of the car window under street light, the soullessness that was starkly evident by day was just about hidden from view. The place was totally devoid of any form of beauty, its main claim to fame was Swindon railway works, which had been turned into one of a few museums and what the modern town was founded upon.

  ‘There it is,’ said Eaton, looking into the distance. The crime car slowed down and the surveillance operation began again, with Eaton directing the uniform traffic driver in surveillance techniques to minimize their presence in Turner’s rear view mirror.

  They continued to follow the Focus as it went through the numerous sets of traffic lights that blighted the streets until they were back in Old Town.

  ‘He’s going towards the lock-ups,’ said Eaton. ‘We can’t follow him down there, we’ll be seen. I’ll have to get out. Pull over here.’

  ‘No, I’ll go,’ said Temple.

  The crime car pulled up a distance away as the Focus did exactly as Eaton suggested and turned into a cul-de-sac full of lock-up garages. Temple made his way quickly down the street. As he walked, he took off his jacket and tie and undid the buttons at the neck of his shirt. He pulled out his shirt from his trousers and, holding his jacket in his hand, he walked toward the cul-de-sac. He slowly walked into it and saw the Focus parked up in the distance. He couldn’t see anyone in it. There were ten lock-ups on either side of the road. In the dark, Temple could see the ones closest to him were closed. He’d have to venture further down the unlit area to see the rest.

  He walked on, tentatively, trying to minimize the crunch his shoes made on the concrete beneath his feet. As he moved forward, he could hear a car engine and was suddenly blinded by the full-on beam of headlights headed straight towards him. He couldn’t see anything but white light and didn’t know which way to jump to get out of the way but knew he had to make a quick decision. He jumped to his left. The vehicle sped past him, leaving him to get up off the road. It turned the corner back onto the main road and drove off. The crime car screeched at the top of the cul-de-sac and Eaton saw Temple getting to his feet.

  ‘You all right, boss?’ he shouted.

  Temple ran towards him, ‘Yes, let’s get after him,’ and he got back into the back of the car. ‘What’s he driving?’ asked Temple.

  ‘A BMW 5 series.’

  ‘Did you get the number?’

  ‘No, only partial, our main concern was that we’d have to pick you up off the road covered in tyre tracks.’

  The car sped after the BMW. As a roundabout loomed with four possible exits, they had no chance of guessing the way it had gone. Temple instructed the partial index number be relayed over the airway for a stop if seen. With no other indication of where the BMW had gone, Temple asked to be dropped back to his car.

  ‘Good effort, guys, thanks.’

  ‘We’ll keep cruising for you, boss, sorry we lost him,’ said Eaton, feeling Temple’s disappointment.

  Temple drove back towards Jane’s. With the adrenalin rush of the crime car pursuit already starting to dissipate, he had a sense that he’d just lost his best chance of making any meaningful progress. Without Turner, all he had against Harker’s wish for him to write up the case against James Ashton-Jones was gut instinct and he knew that wasn’t enough. When he arrived outside the house, despite the time and although he felt tired, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep so he resolved just to sit in his car, rather than go inside and wake anyone.

  H
e looked at his watch. It was 3.45 in the morning. He checked his phone. There were a couple of missed calls, both from Kelly. Temple considered the meeting he would inevitably have with Harker later that day, as he came to read and sign his policy book and see that the investigation was being written up for CPS.

  No doubt Harker would hear about the crime car pursuit and ask him to explain that too, when he’d already given him instructions to close the inquiry. He should have known that he was always going to come off worse working closely with Harker. The past should have taught him that.

  The business with Roger would play right into his hands; Harker would have a field day. Any day now and Temple expected to see PSD again. He looked at his hands; they had healed quite well, another day and there would be hardly any marks left. He still couldn’t feel sorry for what he did. Given the circumstances, he reasoned, no jury would convict him, surely? He wondered how much Leigh would want him back though, once she knew he didn’t have a job. He decided he wouldn’t say anything to her until he was served papers.

  In the meantime, he had to sort out Munt and the Fortunes because she was intent on moving back home. All he knew was, he had to do something about the situation. There was no way he was going to give a gun to Elijah Fortune, but all the time he had it, he knew he was vulnerable. He suddenly had an idea, a way to get Elijah Fortune off his back, but he’d have to give up the gun. He started his car and as he did so, his phone rang.

  ‘Boss, it’s Charlie Eaton. I’ve arrested your man.’

  CHAPTER 44

  ‘WHERE ARE YOU?’

  ‘Wroughton,’

  ‘Are you sure it’s him?’

  ‘It’s him, boss. We picked him up again, an hour or so after you left us. We kept looking for him. He must have been driving around thinking we were following him when we weren’t and when he thought he’d shaken us off, we picked him up and he went home. He took us to a terraced house on the main drag in Wroughton. We sat up and watched him go inside. I was going to ring you then, but after about ten minutes, he came out again. On foot this time. He walked straight past us. I swear he knew we were there. I let him walk on up the road, up the hill, watching him in the wing mirror and then I got out and followed him. He was almost out of sight but I figured there was nowhere really he could go, except into a copse. By the time I saw him, he was lassoing a tree with a rope and putting a noose around his neck. It was already made, so it was premeditated. That’s when I ran to him and arrested him.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me when you located him again?’ Temple hit the dashboard with his hand in frustration and anger. ‘Where are you now, exactly?’

  From his tone, this was not the reaction Eaton was expecting, something akin to a verbal high five he thought would have been more appropriate.

  ‘He’s literally under my boot, boss,’ said Eaton. ‘We had a bit of a tussle. We’re still in the copse. I’m just about to call up the crime car to come and give me a hand.’

  ‘I’m on my way. Try and stay there until I arrive. Move only if you really have to.’

  Temple pushed his car to the extremes of its engine and the winding road to Wroughton. Temple’s main concern was what Turner had done in the house for the ten minutes he was in there before he came out. Temple berated himself for leaving; he should have stuck with it, he could have controlled it. By the sounds of it, a few minutes later and Turner would have been swinging from a tree.

  Temple arrived on the outskirts of Wroughton. He reduced his speed into the approach, going downhill, into Church Hill, in the hope of seeing the crime car. As he approached a line of terraced houses on the left, he saw it parked up, last in a line along the roadside. He’d passed a copse on his approach. Eaton must be in there, thought Temple. He parked up behind the crime car and got out. In the half light, he strode up Church Hill and into a shallow copse by the church. A little way in, he saw Eaton with Turner stood next to him. He saw a rope on the ground. At last, Temple was able to look at him.

  His hands handcuffed behind his back, Turner met Temple’s gaze and the two stood looking at each other momentarily. Temple was met with a dead eyed stare from two small eyes that were detached from soul and spirit. Temple looked him over. He was non-descript – with no outstanding features, he had a clump of badly cut straight dark hair and a grey pallor. He’d shaved off the beard he’d had in his driver’s licence photo. Average height, clean shaven, blandly dressed, Temple figured his appearance was deliberately designed. Typical of surveillance squads, under his guise as a private investigator, he ensured he wouldn’t stand out from the crowd and he wouldn’t be remembered.

  Temple continued to look him over. Dishevelled from rolling around on the ground with Eaton, Turner’s light-weight grey Mac was muddied. Temple noted the greasy stains on the front, near the lapels, remnants of hours spent in cars, eating, while he watched, stalked. Likewise, the front of his cotton trousers. His shirt was also muddied at the front, half tucked in and missing a few buttons from the tussle with Eaton. Temple knew he had to be responsible for Greta’s death – he just didn’t know how.

  ‘What’s he said?’

  ‘Nothing. I haven’t asked him anything. Just told him he was under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Greta Ashton-Jones,’ answered Eaton.

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Temple faced Turner. ‘You are going to be taken back to the police station. Is there anything you want to say or tell me before you go?’ asked Temple, his breath showing in the early morning air.

  ‘You ain’t going to lock me up with nonces, mate,’ Turner replied.

  It was an innocuous enough comment but to Temple, it was all he needed. Relief flooded through him. This was it, the confirmation he needed. He was sure he had his man.

  Temple searched him. In the inside pocket of his coat was his wallet. Temple looked inside and saw it contained bank and credit cards. He replaced it and took a mobile phone and keys from his pocket, then he and Eaton walked him back to the crime car, telling the driver to call for another car to take Turner to custody. Eaton walked down Church Hill with Temple to Turner’s address. Arriving at the small terraced cottage, they let themselves in with the keys.

  The house was devoid of anything to declare it a home; it was merely a building, from which Turner came and went. The house felt cold in the way that houses did when their owners went away for any length of time; cold from a lack of any human warmth within its walls. They went through a narrow hallway, which had a front room running from it. The place was unfurnished. To the rear was a small dining area which led onto a kitchen. Through the kitchen was a bathroom. Temple gave it all a cursory look around; the place was stale. He noticed the dead flies that peppered the black mouldy window sill. Empty take-away cartons from curries and Chinese meals had been left on the kitchen worktops. Turner had obviously just existed here.

  ‘He probably rents,’ said Eaton.

  ‘Find me a computer, a laptop, anything.’

  They went from room to room until, upstairs, Temple found what he was looking for. In a small back bedroom, there were two laptops, one lying on the floor and the other on a small table with a chair in front of it. He knew he couldn’t touch either and he also knew that because of the early hour, he couldn’t contact the Hi Tech Crime Unit who would have to take care of it for him. For ten minutes Turner had been in the house before he went out and was finally arrested. Temple was mindful that he could have done a lot of damage to the hard drives in that time. He rang Control Room for them to put a call in to DS Ceri Lambert to contact him.

  They continued to look around. The largest front bedroom had a sleeping bag on the floor and a rucksack in the corner. A pair of thin curtains hung by a couple of rings at the window. A search of the rucksack revealed a compact handheld video camera, memory cards and an extra battery pack. A third bedroom was empty.

  ‘Tip that rucksack out,’ Temple instructed, ‘Look in every pocket. Look for an addr
ess, we need an address. I want to know where he lives because he doesn’t live here.’

  Eaton hunched down and started to open every zip. There was nothing. Temple instructed him to search Turner’s car outside which again produced nothing. Temple’s mobile rang, it was Ceri Lambert.

  ‘Ceri, I’ve made an arrest in the case and I’m at an address in Wroughton. I’ve got two laptops here and a video camera that will need to come over to your team, how are you fixed for getting someone out here to pick them up?’ asked Temple.

  ‘I can send someone out to you at eight. They’ll bring them back here,’ she replied.

  ‘How long before you can look at them?’ he asked.

  She thought out loud. ‘Well, that’s the difficulty. We’re still dealing with the Swindon job, a load of Facebook stuff needs looking at.’ Knowing that Temple didn’t want to hear that, she relented. ‘I’ll tell you what, we’ll get onto it straightaway. Nothing has come of our other inquiries for you so far, there’s so much out there. Is it just the two?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, trouble is, he was in the house for ten minutes prior to going out and attempting suicide. He may have wiped files and such like,’ Temple explained.

  ‘Don’t worry. We have software that will trace deleted files. Leave it to us.’

  Reassured, Temple and Eaton finished the cursory search of the premises which revealed nothing more than Turner’s eating and hygiene habits. Until he had some hard evidence, Temple knew he had to keep things low key. He couldn’t request a search team straight away in case it alerted Harker to what he was doing. But he also had to deal with the Fortunes and Eaton’s call to him earlier had interrupted that.