‘No, but the last time I saw him he said something about planning to take a holiday soon, that he was owed quite a bit of leave. Yeah, that’s right, he thought he might go abroad somewhere, get right away.’ Another sideways look at his mother. ‘I got the idea he was going with someone.’
‘No name was mentioned?’
Jonno shook his head.
‘So, if anything, he seemed quite cheerful.’
‘Yeah.’
It made no sense.
‘Were you fond of him?’ I enquired. Why this almost complete lack of interest? Or was this son of his emotionally, as well as brain, dead?
The man shrugged. ‘Not really. I felt as though I hardly knew him. He’d never been around when I was a kid. Just a bloke I talked about football with.’
We left, Patrick having given Sue his card in the event of her remembering anything she might think useful.
SEVEN
‘Surely Smithson must have known he was under investigation,’ I said that evening at home. ‘Had he been suspended from duty?’
‘I’ve asked for the full info on the case but haven’t yet received it,’ Patrick replied. ‘I’m guessing that he was informed and put on other duties, possibly at another station or unit. Under Project Riverside SOCA analysed five UK police operations where criminal interference was suspected and in four of them found examples of corrupt individuals including serving and former police officers. All had been used by private investigators to gain access to information. So Smithson wasn’t the only one involved.’
‘It can’t have been Cooper who made contact with him as he was in prison.’
‘No, I think we must assume that he’s new on the scene, not remotely connected with that case, and someone who’s small fry in what the criminal fraternity must regard as the sticks.’
‘But a man with ambition.’
‘Time to clip his wings.’
The information arrived by special courier the next morning and it transpired that Smithson, together with others under scrutiny, had not been informed that they were under investigation but allowed to carry on working under what was described as ‘controlled conditions’. This had been to prevent them, if indeed the suspicions had any truth in them, from warning those for whom they were suspected of carrying out ‘inappropriate actions’.
‘So why did Smithson commit suicide?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Did he somehow find out that he was under investigation and was completely devastated because of being rumbled or because he was innocent and felt isolated?’
‘Or was he murdered on account of having been forced somehow, blackmailed perhaps, into accessing files, had second thoughts and threatened to blow the lid off the scam?’ Patrick mused.
‘Nothing’s for certain.’
‘I agree. And according to his widow he didn’t drink spirits and never needed sleeping pills. That’s if she isn’t trying to muddy the waters due to what she perceives to be the disgrace of it.’
This was not our immediate problem, however, and there was no point in working on it further. But I still had an unsettling feeling about Jonno.
‘No, sorry, you can’t interview the assault suspects – you’re too close to the case as you were one of the victims and also must be aware that it’s against the rules,’ said Detective Inspector David Campbell when we found him in his office the following afternoon. He had been out all morning.
‘I was assaulted on account of being close to the case,’ Patrick countered. ‘Not only that, I’ve been ordered to track down this man who likes to be called Raptor, or is using one of his aliases, who is rumoured to be an associate of Benny Cooper. These men were hired by someone and I want to know who that was.’
Campbell shook his head dismissively. ‘There’s nothing yet to link the man you’re looking for with this assault. The four men arrested in connection with it have been interviewed and remanded on police bail. You may listen to the recordings if you wish.’
Which we did, only to discover that two of them had only confirmed their names, refusing to answer any further questions other than to say they had been drunk at the time and could remember nothing. The third was already known to the police and his address was on file. The fourth man, who had provided an address, did not appear to have been in trouble before but had also refused to answer questions.
‘How are you going to proceed with this?’ Patrick asked Campbell afterwards, his anger apparent.
‘We shall talk to them again – when they’ve realized the seriousness of the charges against them.’
I put a fleeting hold on Patrick’s wrist on the arm nearest to me, hidden from Campbell, as a gentle reminder of his boss’s instructions concerning treading on the toes of a certain DI in the sticks, and without another word he turned on his heel and we left.
‘Thank you,’ I said outside, having to raise my voice above the racket of adjacent roadworks.
Patrick threw his hands in the air in a gesture of acute frustration.
‘We have their names and two addresses,’ I reminded him, having written them down. ‘And Campbell was perfectly correct: for you to interview the suspects is against the rules.’
‘James might have a few ideas.’
‘And we ought to go and see how he is.’
Carrick was not there and Joanna appeared deeply worried, their daughter bawling in her arms when she answered the door. I could see that her own tears were ready and waiting and took the infant from her, taking her for a little walk around the garden, as I do with Mark. This one was not so easily mollified but ended up producing a big burp and was then much happier. After checking that everything in the nappy area was all right I laid her in her pram and strolled with it in the drive until there was every chance that she would go to sleep. Finally, I wheeled her around to the back, where I knew Joanna left her on warm days by the opened French doors, and went inside.
Carrick’s one-time strong and feisty sergeant was in pieces, Patrick on the big black leather sofa alongside her but not knowing what the hell to do. I seated myself on her other side.
‘There’s something terribly wrong with Iona,’ Joanna wailed.
‘No, it’s called baby blues,’ I said.
‘And I don’t know where James is,’ she carried on as though not having heard me. ‘He’s supposed to be resting but he’s gone off somewhere and I’m sure he’s going to do something awful.’
Go and make some tea, I mouthed at Patrick behind the weeping woman’s back.
He went and I put some paper tissues from my bag into Joanna’s hands, she having wrung to soggy shreds the ones already in her possession.
‘Baby blues?’ she queried, turning red eyes to me.
‘You must have heard of it,’ I said a little too impatiently.
‘Of course. But I’m not the sort of person to get silly things like that.’
‘I had baby blues with all three of ours – only not quite so badly with Mark.’ But I had still drenched my husband with abundant tears on several occasions. He hadn’t known what to do with me either.
She actually gaped at me for a few seconds.
‘You do get over it,’ I told her. ‘I discovered that it wasn’t a good idea to take pills. Have you thought about going back to work?’
‘I thought about it when I was pregnant and decided I’d quite like to rejoin the police,’ she answered, smiling sadly. ‘But now …’
‘You could have a nanny.’
‘James might say that I was, well … abandoning her or something.’
I too had entertained such pathetic lines of thinking, which I explained to Joanna. Baby blues. ‘And yet he’s said to me on more than one occasion how good Carrie, a professional, is with ours,’ I finished by saying.
‘It might be a good idea to sound him out about it, then.’
‘Have you no idea where he’s gone? I mean, he might just have gone out for a drive or a walk for some fresh air.’ Not to mention getting away from the howling sprog for a while.<
br />
‘No, he went very early this morning taking his car and said I wasn’t to worry.’
Of course, how stupid of me – two cars are normally parked in the drive.
‘Have you tried phoning him?’
‘No, I hate the idea that he’ll think I’m checking up on his movements.’
Ye gods. I took a deep breath. ‘Joanna, you used to be a cop. You are not some air-head housewife who freaks out every time her husband goes out of the door. If this man who you used to work with closely on serious criminal cases can’t weather a little checking up on for his own safety and welfare then he’s not the James I know.’
Joanna stared at me for a few moments and then said, ‘There’s something else you ought to know – but you and Patrick must promise me that you won’t tell anyone else.’
‘Of course.’
‘I had some photos through the post yesterday – you know, prints.’ She uttered a slightly hysterical hiccupping sort of laugh. ‘A bit odd these days with digital cameras and computers, isn’t it? They’re of James, with a woman in a night club. She’s half naked and crawling all over him.’ She burst into tears again and was still weeping, inconsolable, when Patrick reappeared with the tea.
I whispered the latest developments to him and for a few moments I think he was engaged in the same mental exercise as I was: inventing slow and excruciating methods of removing Cooper from the land of the living. Impalement on a red hot spike up his backside? Far too kind.
‘Can we see them?’ Patrick asked when Joanna had been persuaded to take a mug of tea.
‘They’re in the top drawer of that desk over there,’ she mumbled.
‘Did you have words about this?’ I asked as Patrick fetched them.
‘Well, yes, sort of. I showed them to James straight away – I did freak out a bit – and he was furious and said he remembered it but had no idea who she was. He’d been out with the team at Jingles, a night club in the city, on a regular outing they have, and this trollop, who was drunk, or acting drunk, just flung herself at him.’ After a big sniff Joanna went on, ‘I have to say I believe him. I used to go on these bashes myself when we worked together. We’d all have a meal somewhere and then go to a club. There were often little tarts who gave him go-to-bed eyes.’
‘I take it the place was crowded,’ I said. ‘People wouldn’t necessary have noticed anyone taking pictures with a mobile phone.’ And after all, the man had once been described to me by a friend as ‘wall-to-wall crumpet’.
‘I’m sure it would have been. My real problem with it is that he seems to be enjoying himself.’
Patrick was looking at the three photos. ‘And what man who had at least three whiskies inside him wouldn’t laugh if something like this happened?’ he enquired with a quirk to his lips. He handed them to me.
‘At least four whiskies,’ I decided. The girl looked about eighteen years old and had long dark hair. One of her breasts had fallen out of her dress, the southern end of which was so short it revealed, as she half lay across the DCI, a wisp of black lace not by any means covering her bottom.
‘Was there a note with these?’ Patrick wanted to know.
Joanna shook her head. ‘No, nothing.’
‘You’ve kept the envelope but unfortunately it’s of the self-seal variety. There might still be some DNA on it, though.’
‘Please don’t show them to anyone. It’s not as though anyone’s trying to blackmail us. Perhaps Cooper, or Mallory, is just trying to break us up.’
‘Joanna, we have to—’
‘But I don’t know what James is doing!’ she cried. ‘He was so angry he might be killing this man right now!’
‘He isn’t,’ Patrick said. He replaced the photos in the envelope and gave it to her. ‘But I respect your wishes. Will you keep us informed – as friends?’
She assured us that she would.
Shortly afterwards I received an email with the information that DNA taken from the body discovered in the ditch at Woolwich was a good match with that taken from several human hairs found on and inside Sulyn Li Grant’s husband’s rucksack. This fairly certain identification meant that work on the case could move forward. I emailed the sender to inform or remind him that a shooting had recently taken place at the deceased’s business and that three officers from SOCA, including a commander, had been on the premises at the time.
‘It doesn’t get us very far, though,’ Patrick commented. ‘OK, he was murdered and his widow can be informed of the fact. Perhaps she’ll tell the police a bit more now.’
‘You think she’s been withholding information?’
‘I simply can’t believe she’s completely in the dark. But for now we shall have to let the Met get on with it.’ He paused in what he was doing, staring at nothing.
‘What is it?’
‘The shooting at the café bar – they must have been after Greenway. The owner’s wife gave you the strong impression that she was giving protection money to a Chinese outfit and her husband had insisted when she spoke to him about it that he wasn’t paying anyone.’
‘Yes, but he was involved with crime and she thought he was in some kind of trouble.’
‘But he’d been dead for months by then. If anyone was after him they’d have gone in and hunted him out instead of firing from outside. If you start introducing another set of mobsters who didn’t know he was dead it gets a bit far-fetched.’
‘So you reckon he was murdered by whoever he’d upset in his own outfit and the attack was nothing to do with the café bar at all.’
‘That’s my theory.’
‘It’s possible but still a bit iffy. How could anyone have known Greenway would be at that particular place just then?’
‘They couldn’t. But by his own admission he goes there quite a bit as it’s just around the corner from HQ and all someone had to do was put a casual watch on the premises during normal working hours, his working hours.’
‘Perhaps we ought to call him.’
‘I have already voiced my concerns. I can’t tell him to stay away from anywhere.’
He contacted the Met instead, asking for an update on the case but the person in charge of it could tell him very little. Sulyn Li Grant had been told of the confirmation of her husband’s death and she had remained outwardly unmoved, unable to offer any further information about him or his suspected criminal contacts.
I found myself unable to blame her if she was keeping anything she knew to herself.
DI Campbell was taking the assault on his boss very seriously and the whole car park was cordoned off with personnel doing an inch-by-inch search of the ground. He was not there personally but Lynn Outhwaite, Carrick’s sergeant, dark-haired, petite and clever, was. She greeted us with a wary smile.
‘Have you seen the DCI this morning?’ Patrick asked her very quietly.
She looked surprised. ‘No. I thought he was recovering at home.’
‘He’s supposed to be recovering at home. Lynn, when you recently had a team bash I understand you all had a meal and then went to Jingles night club.’
‘Yes, we had a really good evening.’
‘A little bird tells us that some tipsy dimbo draped herself all over him.’
‘She did. Mind you, he’s a good-looking guy. I have to say, though, he wasn’t very amused about it even though he laughed at the time.’
‘Any idea who she was?’
‘No, none.’
‘Or whether she worked at the club or was just a customer?’
‘No, sorry. Why, has this any bearing on the case?’
‘It might have. Found anything of interest here?’
‘Just a shirt button and a tooth. I know who the latter belongs to as one of the suspects has a fresh gap where a front one used to be. The button is made of bone or horn and might belong to someone who got away, but it’s hardly evidence.’
‘It could be off the shirt I was wearing, which is in a bin somewhere at the nick.’
�
�I hadn’t really pinned any hopes on it,’ Lynn said with a sigh.
Patrick gazed around. ‘As I said to the DI, it’s worrying that those issuing the orders to these thugs must have known, despite our disguise, who we were. Up until now I’ve been at pains to hide my identity from both Benny Cooper and Paul Mallory, who are in the frame for this, mostly because of their past form for this kind of harassment. That cover’s gone now – blown. Mallory lives on the first floor of this terrace and that’s why we were here. Have any of the residents been interviewed?’
‘They have and the people who aren’t away, or were when it happened, all said they were asleep and didn’t hear anything. Except for one, a Miss Braithewaite, who said she’s a light sleeper and had thought she heard people running around in the car park some time during that night. She didn’t get up to investigate further.’ Lynn paused for a moment. ‘I have to tell you that the DI doesn’t go along with this London mobster connection. And as far as he’s concerned Cooper’s just a grubby local newspaper reporter with a criminal record. Glasgow’s full of them, he said.’
‘So what does he reckon was the reason for the attack on us?’
‘Well, as you know they all said they’d all been drinking. He thinks that at the time they just felt like having a little fun with some drop-outs and it all went wrong for them.’
‘It had to be premeditated, surely, as they all refused to answer questions other than to say they were too drunk to remember what had taken place. They’d cooked up that story beforehand.’
‘I tend to agree with you. But Campbell’s the boss right now.’
‘And you? Have you heard any gossip about someone calling himself Raptor? He’s also been known in the past as Nick Hamsworth, Craig Brown and Shane Lockyer. He likes the nickname Raptor because he was once in that gang.’
‘Sorry, no again. They were a London mob, weren’t they?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You could try tracing the other members of it. One of them might know where he is now.’
‘Carrick always says you’re a real star,’ Patrick said, blowing her a kiss.
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