Marcus joined him in silent contemplation.
‘Daydream in your own time,’ barked Fran.
At the gate there were bins and countless other places to ditch something but the CCTV footage had shown Maggs taking no such action. The camera on a pole also covered the length of Nevada Street all the way to where it crossed into Burney Street, which culminated at the station. On one corner of that crossroads there was a tiny square park with shrubs and benches shaded by the fat leaves of a broad London plane.
‘Sorry to drag you out, Marcus,’ said Fran. ‘For the record it was Stark’s idea.’
‘Was it? Oh, well, never mind,’ replied Marcus, rather enigmatically. Fran caught Stark suppressing a smile and scowled at him. Dixon studiously ignored eye contact.
Seemingly unaware, Marcus was peering at a nearby parking meter. He pulled on a surgical glove and wiped his finger across its domed top, inspecting the dust on his fingertip in the sunlight. ‘Glass powder.’ He glanced at the ground and crouched to collect a tiny piece of glass. Stark spotted another. Marcus rummaged around in the shrub behind the courtyard’s low wall and pulled out a piece of plastic casing and then a larger piece of glass. It was thin and faintly curved, not a bottle or sheet glass but, unmistakably, a piece of mobile phone screen. He mimicked the action of smashing an object on the top of the parking meter.
They looked around but found no phone. Then Dixon called out. By a drain gully in the road lay another fragment of glass, very like the others. Dixon prostrated himself to peer down the gully, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘All I can see is reflection on the water,’ he said. ‘Can you find me a stick or something?’
‘Here.’ Marcus produced a crowbar from his small bag as if it were a perfectly ordinary item to carry about. ‘You can try this, but we’ll probably need the jack SOCO use.’
Dixon tried to prise the grate up but it was cemented in place with decades of gunk. Stark crouched to help, gripping the iron grate, but the second he tried to lift, his hip sang out in agony and he let go with a choice curse, hobbled to the low wall and sat flexing his leg gingerly.
‘Okay,’ said Fran, ignoring Stark’s discomfort. ‘Where youth and brute ignorance fail, wiser heads prevail.’
An hour later SOCO pulled the smashed remains of a broken mobile phone from the drain.
‘Did you have any luck with that photograph?’ asked Marcus, as they looked on.
Fran frowned. ‘What photograph?’
‘The faded portrait among Alfred Ladd’s effects – came to me with the body. Constable Stark asked for it.’ Marcus immediately saw he’d spilt a secret but it was too late.
Stark shrugged. ‘His wife, Nancy, most probably.’ Social Services had drawn a blank but his friendly MoD underling had come through again. Alf’s military records listed his wife’s name. The General Register Office had had their marriage and her death certificates. From parish records Stark had tracked down her grave. ‘Died in ’seventy-two, no children or living relatives. That’s all I could find.’
‘The age of the photo and clothing fashion support your theory,’ said Marcus.
‘And where is it now?’ asked Fran, though she surely suspected.
‘Alfred Ladd’s breast pocket would be my guess,’ said Marcus. ‘Next to his heart?’
Stark nodded, avoiding Fran’s eyes.
‘The world loves a romantic.’ Marcus grinned. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Detective Sergeant?’
Fran didn’t comment.
An FSS boffin called later to say the phone’s SIM card registration matched that of the N-Zone number but it would take longer to discover if anything could be salvaged from the phone’s memory. No fingerprints or DNA evidence had survived immersion in the sludgy water.
Fran hung up and relayed the news. ‘Well, Trainee Investigator, if FSS find anything useful the great British taxpayer will know they got their money’s worth out of that energy drink. Come on, you owe me a proper drink.’
Stark was heartily glad to knock off early. Fatigue and the pain in his hip were crushing him.
‘You okay?’ Fran asked, as he flinched sitting down in the pub.
‘Bit sore,’ he admitted, taking a grateful swig of whisky, feeling its burning warmth rush to his aid.
‘You’ve looked like shit for days. Having trouble sleeping?’
She’d watched his conversation about it with Maggs. ‘Global warming, Sarge. I just can’t sleep for the worry.’
She looked at him. ‘You’re an artful dodger. I hope your shrink sees through your crap.’
‘She’s yet to convince me she can see far past her own pre-assumptions.’
‘It’s a she? Have you got a crush on her too?’
‘No, she’s nosy enough but, until she has your passion for roughshod inquisition, she’ll never hold a candle to you in my eyes.’
‘And your other therapist, Tantric Aqua-babe?’
‘I told you, she’s out of my league.’
‘And yet you aspire to me?’ Fran chortled.
‘Not me. I know when I’m outclassed.’
‘Good.’
‘Yep, that Marcus is a helluva guy!’
It was worth it. Besides, a punch in the arm was nothing to the fire in his hip. He’d definitely pulled something trying to lift that sodding drain gully. Pills hadn’t helped much, and while whisky on top did, it also reinforced the fatigue. After a while Fran sent him home. There was a message from Captain Pierson on his phone, demanding to see him in her brusque manner. One by one, thought Stark. But winning round the icy captain was beyond him for now.
‘Ah, there you are, Stark! Guess what I have here.’ Groombridge waved a memory stick.
Stark was in no mood for guessing games. He’d woken before dawn, not from dreams for once but pain. Despite more OxyContin he’d struggled to get comfortable and had hardly fallen asleep again before the radio woke him. ‘Footage off Nikki Cockcroft’s phone, Guv?’
‘You could at least pretend sometimes not to be a smartarse,’ said Fran.
Groombridge just laughed. ‘FSS just emailed it over. They could hardly believe it’d survived. Let’s see where your luck and intuition have led us. If you would, Trainee Investigator …’
Bodies jostled for space around Stark’s computer. The file took a few seconds to open and several long minutes to run. The image was small, packaged for a mobile screen. Once enlarged to fill his screen it was pixellated but clear enough to identify faces and actions. Everyone watched to the end in silence.
‘Still think we should have every officer in the station rub Stark for luck, Guv?’ said Fran, humourlessly. No one was in the mood for jokes with those images fresh in their minds.
‘At least it seems Maggs intervened in time.’ Groombridge’s tone was grim.
The film had shown familiar youths surrounding Pinky by the phone’s dim video-spotlight, taunting her. Nikki Cockcroft’s voice could be heard jeering. Jeering became baying for violence, then worse. The rest of the gang stepped back, perhaps shocked, as Kyle used his knife both to threaten and cut at clothing. One voice even called for him to stop, but Cockcroft spat invective at whoever it was and urged Kyle on with more.
Pinky’s pleading became screaming as Kyle fumbled down his trousers. Just as it seemed too late for hope a bellowing roar erupted. There was the briefest flash of olive drab clothing and a thump, the image became a blur, a crash of the phone tumbling across the ground and then nothing. That was it. It was enough.
‘CPS are going to crucify them with this,’ said Fran. There was a chorus of satisfaction from the team. Someone even patted Stark on the shoulder as if this were all his handiwork, but he was still too sickened to be embarrassed.
‘Everyone except Nikki Cockcroft,’ said Groombridge. ‘We all know it’s her phone and her voice but you never see her face and there’s a lot of background noise.’
Fran frowned. ‘And no one has that number saved in her actual name.’
‘It’s enough
, though, Guv, right?’ asked Hammed.
‘Maybe. And we’ve got her interview slip-up. Depends what the jury call reasonable doubt. What we really need is for one of the others to turn on her, place her at the scene, or we find that girl and get a positive ID. Otherwise the only ID we have is from Maggs, a homeless drunk charged with murder. I think it’s about time I leant on Naveen Hussein. In the meantime get Munroe back in a cell and find me that girl!’
Sobered, the team dispersed.
The first frame of footage sat on Stark’s screen with an invitation to replay: a girl with pink hair looking up in confusion and alarm, unaware of the horror about to be inflicted on her. Stark was transfixed. ‘Who are you?’
‘Good question.’ Stark jumped. Groombridge stood behind right him. ‘At least she escaped the worst, lad. We’ve Maggs to thank for that.’
‘Still think murder is the just charge, Guv?’
‘Don’t you?’ Groombridge perched on the desk and looked down at him seriously. ‘Are you saying Kyle Gibbs deserved to bleed to death in that park?’ Stark didn’t answer. ‘Who would we be to say that? We don’t even hang people when we’re as sure as we can be of the worst possible guilt.’
‘Surely the CPS will see that Maggs intervened with good intent.’
‘All we have is his confession and fingerprints on the bloody knife. Everyone else present is shut up tighter than a drum for fear of making matters worse for themselves. And we have the body of a boy with a knife in his back, his back. We work with hunches, suspicions and bloody-minded legwork, but the CPS can only work with what we present to them.’
‘You’re forgetting someone, Guv,’ said Stark, indicating his screen.
‘No, I’m not.’ He looked deep into Stark’s eyes, perhaps sensing the fury. ‘You must stop looking at this through a soldier’s eyes. Outside combat, moral absolutism is a dangerous precept.’
It felt as if Groombridge was seeing into the very heart of him and Stark had to look away. The moral certainty that let you pull the trigger was a vital but perilous thing; from good versus evil and all the way down to kill or be killed. It could lead to triumphs or tragic mistakes and, like most certainties, might crumble with time or the effort of holding it together. He wondered sometimes whether his own lack of remorse for most of what he’d done was real, merely a legacy of training or, worse, a psychotic construct of his own that might fall to dust once probed.
‘Look at me.’ Groombridge’s voice was soft now, but Stark looked up into a gaze still alight with unnerving penetration. ‘You’re a copper now, Joseph, there’s no going back. Whatever demons and furies pursue us cannot be vented. They must be seized upon and channelled to drive us forward as we choose. The other path leads to bent coppers, or ex-servicemen with blood on their hands.’
‘Point taken, Guv.’
‘Good. So let’s find her, shall we?’
Naveen didn’t crack. Regardless of what Groombridge had suggested, it seemed he remained too scared of Nikki to be nudged back the other way. Munroe was arrested and charged but kept up his silence throughout.
The forensic investigation into the phone found little else. The full report told them that no other videos or images of interest were present, though the log files showed many more had been made. Correlating the dates and times, it appeared that footage had been shot around the time of every one of the assaults on the homeless, but all had been downloaded and deleted and subsequent files had wiped further trace.
Later in the day Groombridge was summoned to Superintendent Cox’s office. He returned with a broad smile. ‘Gather round, everyone. Earlier today, using what they’d gleaned from the Trojan on Naveen Hussein’s laptop, the National Internet Crime Unit raided offices in Manchester. They made several arrests and seized numerous computer servers. In total over thirty illegal websites were shut down. As it was we who first drew their attention to some of these websites, they had a root around and found, on a site called SlappinUK.net, five files uploaded from Naveen Hussein’s IP address. Each file was uploaded within twenty-four hours of one of our assaults. All the victims and perpetrators’ faces were blurred out before upload but not uniformly well. NICU say that …’ he consulted his notepad ‘… the high amount of individual movement means that faces frequently appear momentarily from behind the block of blur layer placed to hide them. They suggest that at least three individual assailants can be clearly identified, possibly more, and two victims. Copies are being emailed to me now. I want you in twos ready to scan through each video with a fine-tooth comb. Have the relevant photos in front of you. This is our big break, people!’
Within minutes the videos were arriving.
Because they’d been to the scene soon after, Fran and Stark took the one dated just after the attack on Alfred Ladd. The location was instantly recognizable, the attack almost unwatchable. Poor Alf’s face was always blurred but his anguished cries were not.
‘There!’ said Fran, pointing to part of the screen. ‘Rewind!’
Stark backed it up and paused the image. Poking out from the side of a rectangle of blur was half a face. Tyler Wantage.
Elsewhere around the office cries of excitement and anger mingled. Within half an hour they had clear identification of three perps: Tyler Wantage, Colin Messenger and Stacey Appleton, plus glimpses of Tim Bowes and Harrison Collier that ought to be enough. Only two victims had been identified but all of the locations could be matched to crime-scene photos.
‘Naveen was careful enough to cover his own face consistently,’ commented someone.
‘But not his clothes,’ said Fran. ‘We could get them all from the clothes alone.’
‘Add the locations, the upload timings and the interview slips and we’ve got them bang to rights,’ said Groombridge. ‘The magistrate will remand them all for sure now.’
‘Still not Nikki Cockcroft, though, Guv,’ Fran pointed out. ‘It’s her phone. It’s always her filming.’
Groombridge didn’t seem about to let that spoil his evident satisfaction. He returned from relaying the good news to the super with a spring in his step and clapped his hands together for attention. ‘Despite my best efforts to take all the credit, the super seems determined to reward you lot as well. Tonight the drinks are on him.’ He raised his voice over the ensuing hubbub. ‘Attendance is mandatory, no excuses accepted! Anyone not hung-over in the morning will be back in uniform by ten.’ The cheering redoubled.
Stark allowed himself to be caught up in the prevailing good mood. It was only a while later that he remembered his hydro appointment. There was no way he’d be allowed to duck the party. With regret he called the Carter and made his apologies.
The evening was in full swing when two uniform officers entered Rosie’s. Their serious manner said they weren’t here to take advantage of the super’s generosity. Stark watched them accost the nearest copper, who turned and pointed. They jostled their way through the crowded pub to Fran and Groombridge. Stark was already making his way over as both stood, faces grave, drinks forgotten. ‘What is it?’ he asked, over the noise.
Fran sighed. ‘Naveen Hussein.’
25
Crossing the police tape was rapidly losing its thrill. Bloody dressings showed where the paramedics had worked on the boy before rushing him to A&E. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, apparently.
‘A taste of his own medicine,’ suggested one constable, earning a quiet rebuke from his sergeant.
A trail of blood led back along the landing to the door of the flat. Not dragged, thought Stark, crouching to inspect the markings. ‘He crawled out, Guv.’
Fran rolled her eyes. ‘Here we go … Are you going to tell us what he ate for supper next?’
‘Lamb curry, if the ready-meal packaging in the kitchen is anything to go by,’ announced Marcus Turner, from the hallway.
‘Marcus,’ Groombridge greeted him.
‘Detectives.’
‘Nothing better to do with yourself of an evening?’ asked Fran.
>
‘Ah, well, sometimes the little orphans’ clinic has to take a back seat to serious police matters,’ he said, unruffled. He, at least, hadn’t come from the pub. ‘SOCO asked me to assist.’
‘All right,’ said Groombridge, pointedly. ‘Let’s take a look, then.’
Marcus led them through his initial thoughts. Blood splatter in the hallway suggested the initial attack had taken place right by the front door. A deep mark in the wall from the door handle was either long-term carelessness or a sign that the attacker had forced their way in once the door was open. Door spy-holes had had no place in sixties urban Utopian idealism and the Husseins had not followed the trend for putting one in. Someone had fitted a chain. Naveen had used it. It hung now, screws torn from the doorframe.
The rest of the beating had taken place in the boy’s bedroom. Probably he’d fled there, hoping to lock himself in. Stark pointed to the smashed mobile phone and computer modem. Marcus nodded. ‘Found and smashed all the landlines too. Shows a rather considered ruthlessness, don’t you think?’
‘He underestimated his victim, though,’ said Stark. ‘The boy crawled outside to set off the ankle bracelet.’
‘Yes. He even knew to keep going along the landing as far as he could to make sure it had triggered before he passed out.’
If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) Page 26