Murder Of Angels - a crime thriller (Detective Inspector Declan Walsh Book 2)

by Jack Gatland

  ‘Considers himself a bit of a Peaky Blinder,’ Anjli muttered, looking at the image of Macca.

  ‘Mackenzie Byrne,’ Billy read from the laptop. ‘Got quite a jacket for a lad his age. Been in and out of detention centres since he was nine. His father is George Byrne.’ Another photo appeared on the screen. A vicious-looking thug of a man, his black hair cropped short as he glared at the camera on a police line-up. ‘George runs Birmingham, and it looks like Macca is some kind of criminal sub-contractor.’

  Monroe nodded. ‘And Moses?’

  ‘Clean sheet,’ Billy looked up from his laptop’s screen. ‘Almost like someone powerful has his back.’

  ‘Must be great when Mummy is a crime boss,’ Doctor Marcos said. ‘No, really. Mine was a cashier.’

  ‘I’m guessing Mackenzie, or Macca, or whatever he’s called is priming himself to take on the family business when darling Daddy dies?’ Monroe stared at the images on the screen. ‘They look familiar. And his Dad. When you get a chance, check if we had any issues with either Mister Byrne down here.’

  ‘So what do we know about the body?’ Declan asked. Doctor Marcos moved to the front, now tapping the plasma screen, bringing up images of the forest crime scene.

  ‘Salmon wasn’t lying when he said the body was there,’ she said. ‘Although watching him at the burial location, it was almost as if he was counting out the steps on a pirate map, which makes sense if he didn’t bury the body. The body however is definitely that of Angela Martin. We gained her identity from dental records and fingerprints.’

  ‘She was printed?’ Declan raised an eyebrow.

  ‘She was Danny Martin’s daughter,’ Anjli said, looking at the screen. ‘they might have named her after an angel, but she sure as hell wasn’t one. Of course she was printed.’

  ‘Sounds like you knew her,’ Monroe looked to Anjli. She shrugged.

  ‘I worked the Mile End beat before taking the DS exam, and after that worked for DCI Ford there,’ she said. ‘We had a lot of occasions to get into it with the Lucas gang. And I saw the Martins, father and daughter around the place. They were local to the area, and she wasn’t a shy, retiring flower in any sense of the word. She was worse than her old man, half the time.’ She sighed. ‘If she’d stayed alive, she might even have given The Twins a run for their money down the line.’

  Doctor Marcos coughed to regain everyone’s attention.

  ‘We also found two identifying marks on the body,’ she explained. ‘The first was a broken arm. Well, an old break, that is. Angela broke it on a school skiing trip a year before her disappearance, and the repaired bone was clear on the x-ray. Also, there was a small tattoo on the right shoulder in the shape and colour of a red rose.’

  She tapped the screen and another photo, this one showing a younger, smiling Angela Martin appeared on the screen. She wore a vest top and was dancing with friends, possibly at a school disco.

  ‘We took this from her social media. It shows the tattoo clear enough to identify and confirm.’ She indicated a tattoo on Angela’s shoulder. Another tap and the same tattoo was seen on another image; this time though it was faded, on leathery, year-dead skin.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Monroe said. ‘Did you learn the cause of death?’

  Another tap, and now the image was a closeup of the dead body’s neck, the rounded bruises clearly visible.

  ‘Strangulation,’ Doctor Marcos read through her notes. ‘Either by a rope or a cord pulled around her neck, or by hanging, As you can see here, there were faint bruises and ligature marks on the skin.’

  ‘Type of cord?’

  ‘Unknown as yet,’ Doctor Marcos admitted. ‘We found some synthetic threads and we’re examining those. Also, the ligature marks seemed to indicate small knots in the cord, all spaced regularly along it. We’re looking into that, too.’

  ‘So a knotted rope?’ Declan wrote this down.

  ‘Or something with bumps in it,’ Doctor Marcos pointed at the windows to the briefing room. On the blinds were rope pull cords, designed as beaded strings. ‘Something like that, for example.’

  ‘So Angela Martin was hanging out with the wrong crowd, twice,’ Anjli mused. ‘Either daddy’s friends or the North London crowd.’

  ‘Three times,’ DC Davey interrupted. ‘Birmingham too.’

  Anjli nodded. ‘Thanks. Yeah, so three times then. Something happens, she’s killed. Buried. And then a year later Janelle Delcourt’s band of happy woman gangsters pay Derek Salmon to take the hit? Why? And why now?’

  ‘Because they needed it out in the open,’ Declan suggested. ‘They had to have someone waiting near the body to call the press when we arrived. They timed this. For what, I have no idea.’

  ‘Something like this screams gang war,’ Monroe suggested. ‘They’re about to do something bad, and this gives them the opportunity and reason to. Angela was seeing Moses, and they killed her. Now the body’s been found, Moses and his mother can blame one of the other gangs Angela hung around with.’

  ‘Then why make Derek do it?’ Declan asked.

  ‘Because there’s more to Derek Salmon than we’re seeing here,’ Monroe mused. ‘I reckon they’ll use him as the patsy, but claim he did it on someone’s orders.’

  ‘That’d do it,’ Anjli nodded.

  ‘We need to find out what’s going on, but we need to do it correctly and by the book if we’re going to free our current suspect,’ Monroe continued. ‘We need to find a link to the Sisters before we go near them. Find some details on Moses and Angela being seen together. See if Danny Martin knows anything.’

  His fingers tapped on the wall beside the screen and Declan could see he was irritated about something here. ‘There are too many things we don’t know. Who killed her, why she was killed, how she was killed and where she was killed. What were her activities leading up to her disappearance, and what’s the connection with Birmingham?’

  ‘Romeo and Juliet with gang wars,’ Billy muttered, looking up, suddenly aware that he was being watched. ‘You know, Montagues and Capulets?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Monroe nodded. ‘But which of these young people is Romeo, and which is Juliet?

  There was a strange tune suddenly echoing around the room.

  ‘Is that the theme to Quincey, MD?’ Declan asked as, with an apologetic look to Monroe, Doctor Marcos pulled out her phone and exited the briefing room, taking the call.

  ‘Looks like it was,’ Anjli smiled. ‘Did you expect anything less from our medical examiner?’

  ‘Right then,’ Monroe turned back to the team, all business. ‘We have little more than we ended yesterday with, and we already have a prime suspect that we currently know didn’t do it.’

  ‘Do we?’ Declan asked. Monroe looked to him, surprised.

  ‘He was your mentor for years,’ he said. ‘You think he could have done this?’

  ‘I can’t help thinking about Shaun Donnal,’ Declan continued. ‘He said that there were corrupt detectives on the original Michael Davies case. Derek was on it.’

  ‘As was I, laddie, so tread carefully.’

  ‘And so was my father,’ Declan replied. ‘But you just said there’s more to Derek Salmon than we’re seeing here, and you’re not in a picture on my father’s crime board.’

  There was a silence at this revelation.

  Declan silently cursed his own stupidity and quick-talking mouth. He hadn’t wanted Monroe to know this yet.

  ‘Patrick had a crime board?’ Monroe asked carefully.

  ‘Of sorts,’ Declan answered equally carefully. ‘I think it was for his memoirs. But Derek’s on it and linked to Johnny Lucas and a couple of other people.’ He forced a smile. ‘If it makes you feel better, you’re not on it.’

  ‘I’d bloody well hope not,’ Monroe snapped, visibly rattled by this news. ‘We shall have a long talk about this crime board later, DI Walsh.’

  Doctor Marcos walked back into the briefing room, and for the first time, Declan saw that she seemed to be sha
ken by something.

  ‘Problem?’ Monroe asked her, seeing the same thing. Doctor Marcos nodded.

  ‘That was a colleague of mine. A West Midlands CSI,’ she said. ‘They dug up a body last night in the Lickey Hills, just south of Birmingham.’

  ‘Whose body?’ Billy asked, already typing into his laptop, pulling a map of the Lickey Hills up and casting it onto the plasma screen. Doctor Marcos paused for a moment, as if still trying to comprehend the call she had just taken.

  ‘They were calling me for a comparison,’ she continued, ignoring Billy’s question. ‘They had some identifying marks and DNA results on the body and they were a little confused.’

  ‘Confused about what?’ Declan asked. Doctor Marcos looked around the room again, as if hunting for the correct words.

  ‘They were confused because what they had shouldn’t exist,’ she said. ‘You see, they’ve just dug up the body of Angela Martin, complete with matching strangulation ligature marks, a DNA match, a broken arm, and a faded rose tattoo.’

  The line hung in the air for a moment as the officers in the briefing room tried to understand what Doctor Marcos had just implied.

  ‘If they’ve dug up Angela Martin, then who did we dig up?’ Anjli had stopped writing in her notebook, the pen just hanging there.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Doctor Marcos replied. ‘We dug up Angela Martin. The data proves it. The historical injuries prove it. The identifying marks, the fingerprints and the DNA prove it.’ She sighed, looking to the ceiling before turning her attention back to the team. ‘It’s just that it looks like they also dug Angela Martin up in Birmingham.’

  ‘We have two identical bodies, and one victim.’

  10

  The Worst Conversation

  The briefing over, and the team now unsure what was truly going on, Monroe decided that the best course of action was to ignore this second, identical body for the moment and to work on what they already knew. This meant however that someone had to be labelled Family Liaison Officer and tell Danny Martin that his daughter was definitely dead.

  Monroe decided that Declan and Anjli should speak to Danny Martin while Billy used the HOLMES2 system to find out whatever he could on Angela’s movements before her death. That she had been rumoured to be in Birmingham, only a few miles from where this second body had been found had not been lost on the team, and it was a confused and sombre Declan and Anjli that made their way into Bethnal Green.

  ‘Twins,’ Anjli muttered as they climbed out of the Audi and stood outside a row of identical looking terraced houses on Cyprus Street. Every house on either side of the road had arched doors and windows, each painted cream to contrast against the tan bricks, while curved royal blue wooden shutters framed the downstairs windows, matching the royal blue doors of every house on the street. ‘It has to be. Or clones.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re in the latter's realm yet,’ Declan was turning around, staring at the houses as he spoke. ‘But Danny must have known, right? You can’t miss a second baby. And the pre-natal ultrasound stuff that Billy pulled up only showed one baby… Why are all the houses identical here?’

  ‘Housing association rules,’ Anjli walked up to one door and hammered on the black metal door knocker. ‘They love their uniformity.’

  After a moment the door opened, and a man stared at them through the crack. He was in his early forties but looked artificially younger; tall, muscled and with his jeans and a Ted Baker polo shirt with his blond hair swept back, his teeth looking like they’d been veneered and his forehead looking suspiciously smooth and wrinkle free for a man his age, Danny Martin looked like a reality TV star trying desperately to knock a few years off his age.

  ‘Alright, Danny,’ Anjli said.

  ‘DS Kapoor,’ Danny Martin replied. ‘You here to tell me what BBC sodding News already informed me?’

  ‘I'm afraid so,’ Anjli nodded. ‘Can we come in?’

  Danny looked to Declan who held up his warrant card.

  ‘DI Walsh.’

  Danny nodded. ‘I remember you from a year ago. Did a piss-poor job finding her then, didn’t you? Still, better late than never. You’re Paddy’s kid, too, aren’t you?’ And with that he opened the door, allowing the two of them to enter. Declan paused for a moment, thrown by the apparent familiarity that Danny Martin had for his father but followed Anjli into the house, closing the door behind them.

  The house was small, but clean. A three-bedroom terrace, the entrance hallway led to the stairs, while a door to the right took them into the living room. It was minimalistic and clean; the wall was a mixture of white shelves and art deco paintings, the fireplace filled up with wooden logs like some kind of bricked-off irony. The floor was hardwood, with a grey rug covering most of it. To the left were doors into the kitchen, and a patio door to the back garden while to the right were two sofas, both matching white leather, placed around a mahogany coffee table; one sofa faced the front window while the other faced a fifty-five inch television attached to the wall over another log-filled fireplace.

  As Declan sat on one sofa, Anjli beside him, he noted that behind him was an artistic screen print of Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the only thing in the entire room that even remotely screamed ‘gangster’. The other thing in the room that screamed out anything was the collection of ornate crosses that seemed to populate the window sills and shelves around him. Declan hadn’t been in here before; Derek had been the one to interview Danny back when Angela had gone missing, but he had never mentioned in any reports that Danny Martin was overtly religious.

  ‘Nice house,’ Declan said. Danny nodded.

  ‘Should be for the money I paid,’ he growled. ‘Bloody place is worth more than a million now, but alone I just rattle around it.’ He looked to Anjli. ‘Go on then, give us the worst conversation.’

  ‘Worst conversation?’ Anjli frowned.

  ‘The one where you tell me that the body was Angela and yes, she’s dead,’ Danny replied. ‘I’ve had to do the same myself a couple of times, so I’d rather we just ripped the plaster off. I’ve been expecting this call for a year now, it’s not new to me.’

  Declan nodded to this. As an enforcer to Jackie and Johnny Lucas, Danny Martin had probably had to tell many people that their sons and daughters were dead.

  ‘A body was discovered in Epping yesterday,’ he said before Anjli could reply. ‘Forensic examination has identified it as that of Angela Martin.’

  He glanced at Anjli, who had looked at him sharply, slightly shaking his head. He didn’t want to mention the second body yet. Missing this silent exchange, Danny just nodded.

  ‘You know who did it?’ he asked.

  ‘We have a suspect in questioning, but we have several lines of investigation,’ Anjli replied.

  ‘Who?’ Danny asked, his tone rising slightly. ‘Who’ve you got in?’

  ‘You know we can’t tell you that,’ Declan leaned forward, ensuring that he took Danny’s attention from Anjli. ‘Just know that we’re going to find her killer and bring them to justice.’

  Danny chuckled. ‘I bet I find them and bring them to justice first,’ he growled.

  ‘Not what I’d expect from a man that seems to have taken the word of God in so strongly,’ Declan replied, indicating the crosses. Danny shrugged.

  ‘I’m Catholic,’ he said. ‘We very much believe in guilt and original sin, but we also believe in an eye for an eye. What do you need to know?’

  ‘What you can tell us about Angela. Did she have any enemies? Boyfriends?’ Anjli asked, opening her notebook. ‘People who would have seen her in her last days?’

  ‘We weren’t talking at the end,’ Danny admitted. ‘We were always rowing. Well, until about a year or two before her death, that was. Then she kept disappearing for weeks on end, which made things a little easier.’ He thought for a moment. ‘She was seeing some lad. Black kid, didn’t know the name. From North London. The rest of the time she was God knows where. She was a serious crackhead at th
e end, too. I tried to get her off it, but she kept finding more, the cunning little mare.’

  Declan pulled up the photo of Moses Delcourt on his phone, turning it to show Danny. ‘This the kid?’

  Danny nodded. ‘That’s the one,’ he said. ‘Never knew his name. Who is he?’

  ‘You don’t recognise him?’ Declan looked surprised at this. ‘I thought you knew all the gangs around London.’

  ‘I know the players, not their children.’

  ‘Fair point.,’ Anjli replied. ‘Did your daughter ever visit Birmingham?’

  ‘Yeah, she was arrested there twice. God knows why she chose there of all bloody places,’ Danny replied. ‘Why would you ask that?’

  ‘Lines of enquiry, nothing more.’ Declan wrote in his notebook. ‘Angela was an only child?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Danny’s face wrinkled as he spoke, and Declan realised that Danny was trying hard not to cry. ‘She was everything to me. Her Mum, my Cheryl… She died in childbirth. There was nothing the Nuns could do.’

  ‘Nuns?’ Declan glanced at Anjli before looking back to Danny. ‘You didn’t give birth in a hospital?’

  ‘Well yeah, and also no,’ Danny said, failing to explain anything. ‘Cheryl was a proper Eastender, you know? Wanted to keep the traditions of her family going. She was born in Saint Etheldreda’s Mission House in Poplar, and we were both devout Catholics, so we went there for the birth.’

  ‘I thought that closed down?’ Anjli asked Danny before turning to Declan. ‘There were a few Missions like this in the fifties and sixties in the East End of London. They used one for that BBC show on midwifes. Lots of people around here, mainly Catholics, would choose Missions over the local maternity ward. Probably because they felt more secure having ‘God’ watching over them.’ She turned back to Danny. ‘But I thought they moved on in the seventies?’