41
‘We’ve got them twice coming and once going, different routes, but both instances we lose them south of Abbey Wood. And traffic cameras are always on sodding poles,’ said Fran. ‘With caps on …’ You couldn’t see faces.
Groombridge stared at the camera stills, baseball caps and gloved hands. ‘Oh, for a distinguishing tattoo.’
‘But …’ She slid a still image on to Groombridge’s desk. There was no mistaking Dawson in it. ‘From the prison-visit camera, Guv. He visited Nikki four times. Guards say they held hands affectionately.’
Groombridge made a face. ‘Doesn’t sound like our Nikki.’
‘Gives us a motive for Dawson, though, if she’s more than just his foot-soldier.’
Groombridge made a face of distaste. ‘Just when I thought nothing in this job could make me shudder. Visits to Gary?’
‘Just his mother. But Dawson visited Tyler Wantage once.’
‘Roping him in,’ suggested Groombridge. ‘What about the vandal?’
Fran slid another picture in front of him. ‘Just after they dropped off the Mondeo. Best FSS can do with the image.’
The grainy enlargement was still inconclusive. Shorter than Dawson, slim, thin-faced beneath his cap: that was about all you could say. Groombridge stared at it thoughtfully. ‘The cars?’
‘Both on cloned plates. The Merc is the same class and marque as Dawson’s but we can’t tell the model.’
‘Dawson’s was de-badged too,’ offered Stark, uselessly.
‘A Mondeo matching the description was stolen two nights ago in Gillingham.’
Groombridge nodded, still staring at the vandal. ‘If I had to guess,’ he said slowly, ‘I’d say this was Billy Whelan.’
‘Guv?’
‘My old guv’nor, DCI Darlington, liked Whelan for the getaway driver.’
‘For the van heist?’
‘Whelan was a usual suspect. Breaking and entering mostly, bit of drugs, but nicking cars was his speciality and he had links to Dawson. I always thought he was too small-time. Anyway, once the case against Dawson fell over, we had nothing on him. But this could be him – he was a skinny little toerag. Though last I heard he was still driving a cab.’ Groombridge sighed. ‘I don’t know, I’m chasing ghosts today.’
‘So where do we start?’ asked Stark.
‘That is a good question. If Dawson is smart he’ll be working in his office like nothing happened.’
‘With four employees swearing he’s been there all day,’ added Fran.
‘As for Whelan, he hasn’t shown up on my radar for a while. Uniform might know him. Work up associates, family, known hangouts and lock-ups.’ Groombridge tapped the image of the Mondeo on the pinboard. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll find it parked in plain sight.’
A constable stuck his head round the door and passed a note to Groombridge.
‘Okay, the guard is out of surgery and stable. They’re confident he’ll recover, no thanks to Nikki bloody Cockcroft.’ Groombridge crumpled the paper and tossed it into a nearby bin. ‘All right, everyone, it’s leg-work time.’
‘You’ll like this, Guv,’ said Stark, hanging up the phone. ‘Billy Whelan is still a registered private minicab driver. Greenwich Council tell me they received a cancellation notice two years ago. Whelan re-registered with Chatham Town Council. They gave me his mobile, cab registration and home address, two streets from where our silver Ford Focus was boosted.’
Fran smiled. ‘Shall we ask HQ to ping the mobile?’
Groombridge shook his head, pained. ‘It’s all a bit circumstantial. The authorizing officer is a stickler. Let’s try this the old-fashioned way first. Call me a cab, would you, Trainee Investigator Stark?’
‘Happy to, Guv.’ Stark used his mobile so Whelan wouldn’t see the area code and put it on speakerphone. It rang but went to answerphone. Stark tried again.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi, is that Billy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can I order a cab for tonight?’
‘Nah, sorry, mate. I’m off.’
Stark thought on his feet. ‘Come on, mate, I won’t take long. Jonny said you’d sort me out.’ He didn’t try to modify his accent: his own was just as likely.
‘Jonny who?’
‘Jonny! Probably didn’t use his name – he’s a bit cute like that. He got your card from last time, said you sorted him out.’
‘I’m off tonight.’
‘Come on, man, there’s this party. It’s not far. I said I’d sort everyone out with tickets.’
There was a long pause. ‘What d’you need?’
‘Five tickets. And some biscuits, how many can you get?’
‘How many d’you need?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Too many. I don’t know you.’
‘I can pay.’
Another long pause. It was a delicate balance. It had to be enough to distract Whelan from his current activities, but it was a lot to ask for a first-time contact calling out of the blue. Too much, probably. A ticket was phone speak for a wrap of cocaine, a gram wrapped in a folded square of paper, like the ones he’d pulled from Gibbs’s rubbish. A disco biscuit was one of the original ecstasy tablets, circa 1988, but was still used as generic slang. Approximately forty to fifty pounds per ticket, and eight to ten per biscuit. Cheaper than getting drunk and prices kept falling.
‘Sixty a ticket. Fifteen a biscuit.’
‘That’s a bit steep!’ Stark grabbed his pad, scribbled one word and held it up to Fran – address!
‘I don’t know you.’
Fran pulled up online maps.
‘Oh, come on, mate, this is highway robbery!’
‘Take it or leave it.’
Stark paused as long as he dared while Fran searched for Chatham. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Joe.’
‘Address?’
Fran zoomed in on a residential area. ‘Meet you at the corner of Gordon Road and Portland Street. Nine o’clock.’
‘Where’s the party?’
Groombridge shook his head. Whelan was fishing. He wanted to drive by and check it out before he made the pick-up. Stark wouldn’t want to guess a location anyway. ‘I’ll tell you when you pick me up.’
‘Tell me now.’
‘So you can leave me standing in the street while you sell direct? I wasn’t born yesterday.’
‘I’m only asking.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t know you, and you’re already overcharging.’
Whelan laughed. ‘All right, don’t get mardy. If you don’t dick me around tonight we’ll talk a better price next time. Bring your tokens. Don’t be late. We good?’
‘We’re good.’
Whelan hung up. Stark let out a long, deep breath.
‘Not bad.’ Groombridge chuckled. ‘Your first undercover work. What made you think of it?’
‘You mentioned drugs and his connection to Dawson. We nabbed a handful of Gosport cabbies for dealing, and some doormen.’
‘A universally convenient and lucrative sideline to both. But if he’s willing to show his face for pocket money he’s either stupid or uninvolved. I look forward to asking him. Put out a call on his cab, see if we can pick him up early. Otherwise Stark goes undercover for real.’
Fran shook her head. ‘Guv. His face …’
Stark said nothing. She was right. His face was too public, his scars too memorable. Undercover work would not feature heavily in his new career.
‘Maggie will sort him out. Swing by home for suitable attire on the way. Get on to Chatham for a bit of help.’
There was no sign of the Mondeo or the trio when Stark and Fran set off to Chatham. Whelan was late, probably coasting up and down the local streets to check for uniform cars. It was already ten past nine and Stark had been on the corner of Gordon Road and Portland Street for twenty minutes without his cane. He was beginning to sweat.
A Skoda Octavia minicab a
ppeared at the next junction along. Whelan peered at him for a moment, cautious, then pulled up alongside. ‘You order a cab?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Name?’
‘Joe. You Billy?’
‘Hop in the back.’
Stark did his best not to fall in.
‘I know you?’ said Whelan, looking in his mirror.
Stark had on casual clothes, a cap to cover the scars in his hairline and the cunning contents of Maggie’s makeup case masking those on his face. Harper hadn’t passed up the opportunity to suggest lipstick and a frock. ‘Must’ve used you before. Expect I was mashed.’
Whelan appeared to accept this. ‘Where to?’ he asked, pulling out.
Fran’s car pulled across the street forcing Whelan to stop. ‘What the … Oi!’ he shouted out of the window and leant on his horn angrily. Fran waved cheerily. A local unmarked car pulled up behind and both put on their concealed blue lights. In the mirror, Whelan’s face was a picture.
‘The police station, please,’ said Stark, holding up his warrant card. ‘Billy Whelan, I’m arresting you on suspicion of possession of prohibited substances.’ Better to have him in cuffs before they mentioned assisting an escape. Possession, even in the amounts discussed, was less likely to send him running. The locals had wanted to wire Stark up and go for supply, but once they realized who he was it was obvious his face was too fresh in the public mind. His inexperience clinched it.
Whelan still looked panicked and fit to bolt, but there were already uniforms outside his door. A search of the car showed why. He’d brought extra, a lot extra, obviously hoping to resupply the party. The Chatham police understandably insisted on charging him at their nick before handing him over. It was gone midnight before Mick closed the cell door on Whelan in Royal Hill.
The buzz of the day had long fizzled out. Two-thirds of the team had been sent home to sleep. Those left looked out on their feet and out of ideas. There had been several public sightings of the grey Mondeo, all mistaken, and nothing on the plate-recognition cameras. Liam Dawson had not turned up at his office or been tracked down at any of the clubs. Stark made himself busy, lest anyone point out that he shouldn’t be there. He picked up Whelan’s phone in its evidence bag and began copying its numbers into the database. He was tired, and it was several minutes before he thought to scroll down to L.
Keeping a lid on his excitement he double-checked before showing the number to Fran.
‘Liam?’ Fran looked at him. ‘A different phone from the one Callie Cockcroft texted at the courthouse?’
Stark nodded. They could request a ping on the new number’s location. ‘There’s more – that number flagged a connection in the database. Nikki Cockcroft had the same number saved in her smashed phone as D. And it gets better – while Dawson was smart enough to use a separate phone for the escape, Whelan wasn’t. His shows calls to and from Liam’s courthouse phone and the records might pinpoint locations.’
42
Whelan barely reacted when confronted with his blunder. He listened to their questions, accusations and threats in silence, then uttered just one word: ‘lawyer’.
‘Well, that was short and sweet,’ said Fran, closing the door to the interview room.
‘He might be small-time but he’s a proper villain.’ Groombridge rubbed his temples. ‘We won’t get anything out of him.’
Stark looked at the clock: ten past one. No wonder the guv’nor was tired.
‘Guv!’ Dixon came down the corridor, looking like he’d run every step.
‘The ping?’ asked Groombridge.
Dixon shook his head. ‘No current location on the new number, Guv. Either switched off or another burner …’ He glanced at Groombridge, whose disapproval of cop-show Americanisms was written on his face. ‘Sorry, Guv, disposable pay-as-you-go mobile phone.’
‘Right. So?’
Dixon rallied. ‘I just took a call for Stark from the National Crime Squad – one of the numbers he entered on the database, off Whelan’s phone, flagged up against an NCS investigation. They wanted to know everything we had but they wouldn’t tell me anything at all.’
Groombridge’s hackles rose. ‘Is that so? Well, let’s see if they’ll be any more forthcoming with me.’
They followed the DCI up to the door of his office but he closed it behind him. In the prevailing quiet the door was no match for the raised voice behind it. For the first time Stark heard Groombridge swear. It turned out the DCI was quite proficient.
A few minutes later Groombridge emerged, unruffled. ‘Right. NCS immigration crime team have been working jointly with the UK Border Agency, and the number flagged belongs to a fake-passport supplier they’re keeping tabs on in deepest, darkest Deptford. They’ve had his phone tapped for months. They refused my request to pick him up for questioning – they want whoever is supplying him with blank documents but, most importantly, they’re keeping tabs on his customers. They’re after terrorists or people-traffickers, not small-time crooks like Whelan. After a little persuasion they did agree to email over redacted transcripts of “relevant conversations” for my eyes only.’
It took an hour for the email to arrive. Heads were nodding when Groombridge bustled out of his office holding a sheaf of paper. ‘Right, heads up! Nearly four weeks ago Whelan ordered two fake IDs – passport, driving licence, birth certificate, bank account, credit card, the lot – paying in cash. The names on the documents were Nicola Michaels and Steve Baker. Get back on the phones to the airports, ferries, Eurostar, Eurotunnel, shipping companies, private-boat hire, et cetera. Bookings under those names. That means now!’
‘Let’s hope we’re not too late,’ said Fran, earning a sharp look from Groombridge.
There were no bookings, past or future. That ruled out airports. Unfortunately all it took to legitimately leave mainland Britain was to be seated in a car booked on to a ferry or into a tunnel by a third party, real or fictitious. On the ferries you had to stipulate in advance how many people would be in the car; for the tunnel you didn’t even have to do that. Likewise Nikki Cockcroft might have left by private light aircraft or small fishing boat, though the weather offshore had been rough. Consequence of an island nation. Nikki, a.k.a. Nicola, could already be abroad. Interpol had her alias now but Europe was a big place with vast open borders.
‘Okay,’ said Groombridge, with energy he couldn’t possibly feel. ‘If you can’t find the person, find the car. Where are we?’
‘Nowhere,’ replied Fran.
‘No ports have a booking for the Mondeo, Guv,’ added Williams.
‘They’re obviously not that stupid. Our Nikki needs a new car.’
‘I’ll get on to Chatham and see what other cars went missing in the last few days,’ suggested Fran.
Groombridge was shaking his head. ‘Do that. But they’d be mad to use a hot car. They need a clean one. That’s what we should be looking for.’
‘Guv.’ Stark put up his hand self-consciously. ‘One of the numbers on Whelan’s phone was a car dealership in Chatham.’
It turned out that three cars had been boosted in the Chatham area in the last two days. But Fran was more interested in what the Chatham police had to say about the dealership.
‘It’s a small independent owned and run by one of those old-school wide-boys. They suspect he supplies the odd stolen luxury car to an Albanian outfit that ships them off in containers, ruthless bastards. Whelan might supply the occasional car, I suppose. But if you’re an iffy type in need of a clean car and you know an iffy car dealer …’
Groombridge nodded. ‘All right. You and Stark get over to Chatham and shake down the car dealer.’
‘Come off it, Guv. We just got back from that shit-hole!’ protested Fran.
‘So you know the way.’
Fran rolled her eyes. ‘Come on, then.’ She jerked her head at Stark with enough of a glare to impart blame. ‘If we leave now, you can buy me breakfast and at least three coffees.’
Fran was stil
l tsking an hour later as they sat in the car outside the dealership, sipping their cooling coffees. Stark’s stomach rumbled. A service-station sandwich was not the canteen’s full English he’d been banking on. Fran seemed satisfied with her Danish and double espresso. She didn’t seem tired, she didn’t seem hungry, just angry. Perhaps that was what sustained her. But if she was too angry to be tired he was rapidly becoming too tired to be angry. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep this up. He rested his head against the cathartic coolness of the glass.
A punch in the arm woke him. Fran ignored his pointed rubbing and pointed across the street. A man in a Barbour jacket and flat cap was unlocking the heavy padlock on the barrier across the entrance to the yard. Stark got out stiffly. The man looked at them as they approached, uncertain. It was too early for customers unless they were very keen. Fran held up her warrant card and his face defaulted to cagey.
‘Douglas Brown?’
‘Not a crime, last time I heard.’
‘We’d like a word inside, if you don’t mind.’
‘I do mind.’
‘I suppose we could talk out here. We could still be talking out here half an hour from now when your customers start showing up. Stark, go and put on the blue lights so everyone can see who Mr Brown is chatting to so early in the morning.’
Brown looked at the busy passing traffic, clearly unhappy at the suggestion.
‘We just want to see a list of recent sales, nothing untoward.’ Fran smiled but Brown’s distrust was plain. She sighed. ‘Listen,’ she let her impatience show, ‘I’m interested in your legitimate dealings. If you prefer I’ll have an officer here in an hour with a warrant. But by then I might decide to take an interest in other dealings. Albanian ones, perhaps.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Perhaps a quick outing to their yard might jog your memory. They’re upstanding citizens like yourself. I’m sure they’ll be as happy to help us with our enquiries as they’ll be to know you’re doing the same. You know how co-operative these Albanians are with the police.’
Brown was in his sixties. Long past the bravado and imagined invincibility of the up-and-coming crook. ‘Come in, then.’
If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) Page 40