The All-Points had been updated with a registration number, more good work from Bridget, and the make of car, a Toyota as believed, as well as its year of manufacture and colour.
Surveillance cameras were scanning for the vehicle, as were cameras in each and every patrol car. It was an automatic sequence; it was bound to give a result, if the car was still visible, its progress after it left Canning Town, and if within the concentration of cameras in the city, a reasonably accurate detail of the location where it had been last seen, good enough for more concentrated enquiries, out on foot and walking the area.
The team knew that Gareth Rees was coming to them; there were just too many factors against him now, although if he was to be taken, armed officers would be needed. Isaac phoned the head of the team that they had used at Naughton’s address in Holland Park, assured him that this time it was not a wild goose chase and that Rees was experienced, armed, a murderer, and a crack shot. This was not an amateur that they were dealing with.
Chapter 27
Gareth Rees sat in the interview room at Challis Street. His arrest had been without violence; the man had even been polite as he got out of his car after a patrol car had picked up the registration plate. Isaac had spoken to him briefly on his arrival and could see that he was as Gabbi Gaffney had described. He was well-dressed, an open-necked shirt, a jacket, a pair of grey trousers. He was tall, clearly fit for his age, known to be forty-four.
So far, the man had not had a chance to give his side of the story, although he had been formally cautioned and told that he was in the police station on suspicion of murder. A lawyer of his choice was on the way to the station, and until the man arrived, the interview would not commence.
At eleven-thirty in the morning, the imperious Jacob Jameson entered the station. He was known at Challis Street, a fair-minded man of searing intellect, a cultured accent, the child of affluent parents, and his manner in a courtroom and the eloquence of his speeches for the defence had meant that more than a few villains had walked free. Isaac was determined this was not to happen with Rees.
Isaac went through the formalities in the interview room. Rees sat back on his chair, only sitting upright when stating his name. Jacob Jameson, resplendent in a pin-striped suit, sat firm, his arms folded, only unfolding them to read the case against his client, the murders so far, and the evidence, which, apart from the killing of Sean Garvey, was perilously weak.
‘My client reserves comment,’ Jameson said. ‘Apart from a blurry photo and Mr Rees being in the location of a shooting in Canning Town, and we will contend that he was there on legitimate business, your evidence is based on the circumstantial, and the frustration of the police in failing to find the murderer.’
‘Mr Rees,’ Isaac said, ‘you were in New Barn Street at the time Sean Garvey was shot.’
‘I was,’ Rees responded. ‘I saw a commotion, that’s why I left.’
‘And you were on a fire escape, with a clear view of the man?’
‘I’ll not deny it; no point, seeing you have the photo.’
‘Your purpose for being up there?’
An interruption from Jameson. ‘My client was checking out a property for sale. The prices are depressed in the area, and he was taking the opportunity to evaluate a possible investment.’
Isaac looked over at Larry as if to say, is this true?
Outside the room, Wendy phoned Bridget, asked her to check.
‘You were carrying a bag?’ Isaac directed his question to Gareth Rees.
‘I was.’
It seemed to Isaac and Larry that the forty-five minutes that Rees and his lawyer had spent together before the interview had been time well used. There was no doubt that Rees was Garvey’s murderer, but no one had seen the rifle, nor the shot being taken, and the weapon had not been found. Rees was innocent until proven guilty, and Chief Superintendent Goddard, who was listening in from the other room, realised that at this rate the man could still walk free.
Bridget came back within five minutes to state that the building with the fire escape had been up for sale four weeks previously, but had since been withdrawn from sale. Whether Rees knew this wasn’t important.
The case against Rees was not cast-iron.
Isaac, struggling to keep the interview going and in the police’s favour, tried a different tack.
‘Mr Rees, Godstone, a village to the south of London. Do you know it?’
‘I do.’
‘You rented a house there in the company of an Asian woman.’
‘I’ve driven through it, had a pint of beer in the pub, and as to this Asian woman, I only know of one, and she did a runner as soon as I got her permanent residency in England.’
‘Are you in contact with your former wife?’ Larry asked.
‘No, but I know where she is.’
A veiled threat, Isaac wondered. Rees would have realised that it must have been Gabbi Gaffney who was the primary source of information for the police.
‘You are also known as Peter Hood.’
‘I am.’
‘Why?’
‘A man is entitled to call himself what he wants.’
‘Your evidence?’ Jameson said. He said little, waited his time. Whether Gareth Rees was innocent of the crime that the police alleged was not his concern. His job was to give the best legal advice and expertise that money could buy, and Jameson wasn’t cheap, which meant that Rees or someone else had the money to pay him.
‘Do you know a Janice Robinson?’ Larry said.
Isaac would have preferred that Larry hadn’t raised the woman’s name, not yet.
‘Canning Town, tell us about your time there?’ Isaac said, focussing back to the area.
‘I prefer to keep out of there as much as possible,’ Rees’s reply.
‘Why?’
‘Have you been there? It’s not the best part of London, more like Baghdad than Britain.’
‘And you’ve been to Iraq?’
‘I have. I was a soldier, enough medals to wallpaper this room.’
‘You were a killer.’
‘I followed orders. That’s what they teach you, and those who join the military hoping for an education and a cushy life are naïve. In the military, you kill or are killed, whether you like it or not.’
‘And you, Mr Rees, did you like it?’
‘Killing people?’
‘Yes.’
‘If ordered, I did my duty.’
Jameson was looking over at his client, unsure where the questioning was heading. He leant over, whispered in his ear. ‘They’re baiting you.’
Rees sat up straight again, rested his arms on the desk. ‘Someone had to do it, so you can all sleep safe in your beds at night. And, no, I didn’t enjoy it.’
‘Sometimes, innocent people were killed.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Is that why you were court-martialled?’
‘My client’s military record,’ Jameson interjected, ‘is not of relevance here. Whether he had a predilection for killing in a war or not is unimportant. A person is guilty of a crime as a result of proof, not supposition, a muted conscience for right and wrong, moral or amoral. If you are unable to provide further evidence, then it is for the police to terminate this interview and to allow my client to leave.’
‘Your client will be formally charged with the murder of Sean Garvey,’ Isaac said.
‘Without evidence?’ Jameson’s retort.
‘Our investigations are ongoing. Let me ask Mr Rees about his former wife. His understanding of what happened between him and her is contrary to what we’ve been told.’
‘They’re all the same. Find a lonely western man, wiggle their asses, get him excited. Once they’ve got what they want, then it’s a changed situation.’
‘Analyn?’
‘I don’t know the woman.’
‘She was at Mary Wilton’s brothel when you went to see your wife.’
‘If she was, I didn’t see her.’
‘You’re not disputing that you visited your wife at a brothel?’
‘Why should I? It’s what she was doing in the Philippines.’
‘You gave her money.’
‘I did. It seemed the decent thing to do.’
‘Mr Rees, decent and honourable are two words that wouldn’t describe you,’ Isaac said. ‘What we believe happened in Iraq was that you went rogue, exceeded your orders and indiscriminately killed innocent people.’
‘It was a war, innocent people die.’
‘Collateral damage maybe, but for you to be drummed out of the military is a fair indicator that you care little for life, and that murder comes easily. Why didn’t you have sex with Janice Robinson before killing her? Amanda Upton? Why the grave at Kensal Green? It was an assassination of a woman who apart from her choice of a profession doesn’t seem to have committed any grievous crime. Who were you protecting? Whose orders were you following?’
‘This is ludicrous,’ Jameson said.
Isaac chose to ignore him. ‘Ian Naughton called you Gareth when the two of you waylaid a gang of hoodies in Canning Town. Why that gang? How did you know that Waylon Conroy was more intelligent than most gang members, more likely to acquiesce and to kill Hector Robinson?’
‘I wasn’t with an Ian Naughton. I don’t even know the name,’ Rees said.
‘You know him, we know that. What name he uses at other times we don’t know, but we met him at a house in Holland Park. He was in the company of Analyn, as you were in Godstone. Witnesses will testify that you are the man in the village, and both Inspector Hill and I know what Analyn looks like. The BMW?’
‘What BMW?’
‘The BMW in the garage in Godstone and a burnt-out wreck on a vacant block of land in Canning Town are one and the same. Mr Rees, I put it to you that you can act as a rational and decent human being, but as a result of actions you have committed in extremely dangerous situations, you have another side to you.’
‘What does that mean?’ Jameson said. ‘Aspersions have no weight in law, any more than amateur psychology of my client’s mental well-being.’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder doesn’t seem to be the issue here, but you may have had a prior condition that was invaluable in the military. Not that they should have considered you, and they are not willing to let us know, but with a murder charge, they may be forced to release those details.’
‘They won’t,’ Rees said. ‘The Official Secrets Act will keep whatever I and others did under wraps.’
Isaac knew it was true. He had had experience with the secret service before; government-sanctioned assassinations to protect a politician and his indiscretion with a soap opera star when they were both young, a shared son. The son adopted, his later conversion to extremist Islam making him a threat to the government, would have had added power to his voice if his father had become known. In the end, people had died, including the star. Isaac didn’t want to have to deal with those who operated in the shadows.
The interview had gone badly, Isaac had to concede. He had tried rapid-fire questioning of Rees, hoping the man would have become confused and blurt out the truth, making a statement contrary to the known facts, indicating knowledge of a person or a location that placed him at a crime scene, but it hadn’t worked. Jacob Jameson wanted the man released; Isaac did not.
Gareth Rees, a self-confessed killer under military orders, a killer under the orders of Ian Naughton, whoever he was, or of his own volition, was led down to the holding cells at Challis Street. The team had less than twenty-four hours to come up with more substantive evidence, a possible forty-eight if they could provide proof that the charge against the man for the murder of Sean Garvey was likely to result in a conviction.
***
It was a tense time in Homicide, and Isaac was concerned that the two days he had promised to Jenny before he could focus time on her would not be enough.
Gwen Pritchard was brought back into the team; she would be working with Wendy and Bill Ross out at New Barn Street, looking for people who could have seen the shooter fire the shot, people with smartphones taking selfies, unaware of what was in the background.
Larry was going to follow up on where Gareth Rees was arrested and try to find his home address. Bridget was still trying to find out Rees’s mental state from the military, as well as trace the movements of the car that he had been driving, a rental hired by him for the day of Garvey’s death.
Isaac wanted to know how Rees would have known that Sean Garvey would leave the building where he lived and walk down the street, not that he got far. The phone that Rees had been carrying did not have Garvey’s number on it, which led to two conclusions. The first was that Rees had staked out the area on the off-chance that Garvey would come out, which seemed unlikely. It wasn’t the best area, and a well-dressed white male would have stood out, and curious people would have started to ask questions. The second and more probable was that he had used a ‘burner’, the slang for a throwaway phone favoured by criminals. Used for a day, thrown in a bin at the end of it. Phones were cheap enough and monitoring them, even with the number, was a laborious chore.
As for Isaac, he had to take a couple of hours, go with Jenny to the gynaecologist. His responsibility with Homicide told him that he shouldn’t, but his heart told him that he had to. After that, the house in Holland Park where he and Larry had first met Ian Naughton and Analyn.
Wendy phoned the Robinsons and the Winstons back in their respective houses after the threat level had been reduced since the arrest of Gareth Rees. She also called Gabbi Gaffney, told her that her first husband was in custody and her help had been invaluable. The woman was not pleased to hear of the arrest, and there was a sense of fear in her voice.
Meredith Temple had been updated, but still Wendy told her to be careful.
Ian Naughton and Analyn remained at large. Gareth Rees had not admitted to knowing either, but he had definitely been in Godstone with one, in Canning Town with the other, but in English law a man was innocent until proven guilty. And there was no indisputable proof, only a large number of events leading to that conclusion.
Isaac honoured his time with Jenny. There were no problems, and the birth was due in six weeks, long enough to move houses and at least fix up the baby’s bedroom. He had even taken Jenny to lunch and then driven her home.
It was just after three in the afternoon when he drew up outside the house in Holland Park. The estate agent had since let the home to a family, the husband transferred to his company’s head office in London.
Inside the house, little had changed apart from the family’s attempts to make it their own.
‘It’s only for a short time until we find a place of our own,’ the wife said.
‘You’re aware of why I’m here?’ Isaac said. He was on his own; everyone in Homicide was busy, and besides the threat that Naughton would have possibly posed was no longer present.
‘Not really.’
‘I met a man and a woman here. He was English, she was from the Philippines.’
‘They’re not here now,’ the woman said as she knelt down to pat a small dog that wanted attention.
‘I know, and it’s unlikely they’ll come near here. After we had been here, they soon disappeared. The problem is finding them.’
‘I can’t help. The place was clean and freshly painted when we moved in, no sign of the previous occupants.’
‘No letters addressed to a previous tenant?’
‘None.’
Isaac took a seat, looked around him. It was a lot bigger than the house that he and Jenny had just purchased, but Holland Park was a step up from Willesden; it was the suburb of the wealthy and famous, the haunt of celebrities and young upwardly mobile high-flying currency traders. Isaac hadn’t the heart to tell the woman that two blocks away Spanish John lived in another equally impressive house. She looked a gentle woman, the sort of person who saw the best in people, who had never experienced life on the edge. Yet now s
he was living in a house that was inextricably linked with violent deaths. Isaac also knew that the estate agent, when he had shown the house, had not mentioned the police interest in the place.
‘The two people I met here are persons of interest in a murder investigation,’ Isaac said. The truth couldn’t be avoided, although he wasn’t sure where the conversation was heading.
‘Did they kill anyone?’
‘The woman, no. The man we don’t think is a murderer either. We already have someone for two of the murders, although one murder is not yet solved. It’s proof we need, and the man, he used the name of Ian Naughton, is probably behind the deaths. Yet again, we aren’t sure of a motive.’
‘I wouldn’t have moved in if I had known.’
‘No murders were committed here, you’re safe on that score. However, a cryptic message led us to this house, which is bizarre. If the people here were involved in wrongdoing, why advertise themselves.’
‘The woman in the cemetery? I heard about it on the television.’
‘Yes. We know who she is, but not why she died.’
‘This Naughton?’
‘We don’t think so. Amanda Upton did not sell herself in England, not from what we can tell. Any sign of women in the house?’
‘Freshly painted. None that I can see.’
‘Why this house?’ Isaac said.
‘A test?’
‘That’s what we were thinking, an attempt to ensure that the person who deciphered the clues was of suitable calibre, but that’s about it. And why was Naughton in this house with the woman?’
‘Maybe he knew who was coming. Just wanted to be sure it was that person. Maybe they were watching at the cemetery.’
‘If they were, they would have known that the police were coming. It’s more than that.’
Isaac left the house, realising that discussing the case with an open mind had raised other possibilities as to why they had been directed to the house, and why Naughton had not moved out immediately.
Grave Passion Page 25