He pointed to the sofa and chairs away in the corner.
‘Sit down, Mr Court.’
He could see from Court’s expression and silence that he’d been right; Court was in it up to his neck. Court sat on the sofa and Palmer remained standing a few feet in front of him, the power position favoured by interrogators.
‘So, Mr Court, you told me Jack Bernard was off on the day he was killed; and that Hanson and Clark didn’t work for you.’
Court was flustered.
‘I want my lawyer.’
‘Well you’re not in custody, so you’re not going to get him.’
Court made to get up and Palmer pushed him back down.
‘Your choice, Mr Court. Sit and listen, or I arrest you, put handcuffs on you and march you out of the building in front of all your employees. Your choice.’
Court chose to stay seated and listen.
‘Good, now let me bring you up to date. My Sergeant, who you met, is a very capable forensic computer analyst. We have the Deliver-Eat SIM card from Jack Bernard’s mobile phone which puts him working on the day of his murder and taking calls from this office; calls that had him picking up from the same address twice. A takeaway off the Charing Cross Road. Once he’d picked up he then made numerous deliveries, presumably dropping off whatever it was he had picked up. Now, your clever little system of blanking out his 102 number from the big screen doesn’t blank it out from the hard drive memory – my clever Sergeant brought it back to life, and hey presto! There is all the information on it that we need for me to call you a liar, for me to suspect you are involved in three murders, and for me to arrest you. And when my officers visited Hanson and Clark’s bereaved families we found your apps on both their SIM cards, showing they too were working for you on the days they met their end. And they also picked up from the same address Bernard did.’
He leaned in close to Court.
‘So, Mr Court, I want the truth and I want it now, or you can kiss the family goodbye – if you have one – and look forward to spending the next thirty years in an eight by twelve foot cell with a variety of unsavoury characters for company. Take a couple of seconds to think about that before you say anything else.’
Court knew he was on a hiding to nothing.
‘I’ll do a deal.’
Palmer rolled his eyes at the ceiling and laughed.
‘A deal? I think you’ve been watching too many American gangster films. You have nothing to offer me for a deal.’
‘I can name names.’
‘I already have the names. I assume you mean the Arifs?’
Court felt like he’d been hit in the privates with a sledgehammer.
‘I had to do it, I don’t have a choice.’
‘Why?’
He spoke very softly.
‘My daughter is an addict.’
‘Cocaine?’
‘Heroin. They keep her supplied; they used the threat of her having an overdose by mistake to get me to play ball.’
‘By mistake?’
‘Yes.’
‘In other words, they would administer an overdose if you refused to go along with them.’
‘Yes. I don’t get any money, the delivery chaps aren’t ours which is why we don’t show them on the screen. They work for the Arifs, they just use our wi-fi system.’
Palmer noticed Gheeta and Knight were in reception.
‘That’s more like it, Mr Court. The more help you give me, the more help I’ll give you. Now, which one of your dispatchers is the Arifs’ man?’
‘What?’
‘Which one of the dispatchers is working for the Arifs? One of them is because the Arifs, or their people at the takeaway won’t be ringing in like a normal punter, or the job might go to one of your real delivery boys if it went through the Deliver-Eat system. No, they ring a special number which probably comes direct to one of those dispatchers on the other side of this room who is an Arif employee.’
He paused for a moment to let Court realise the game was up.
‘Don’t look now mister Court, but I think it is the chap on the far-right console; he hasn’t stopped watching us since we came over here. Would I be right?’
Court nodded.
‘Yes.’
Palmer waved through the glass partitions to Gheeta and Knight to come in and waited as they walked through the desks; all heads were turned to them now as Gheeta was in uniform. They came into the despatch room and joined Palmer, who spoke quietly to them.
‘Don’t look now, but the dispatcher on the far right is one of the Arif’s people. Arrest him for being involved in drug dealing, but do it fast; I don’t want him having time to send an alert out by phone or text. Cuff him and take him to the car. Be careful, in case he has a knife.’
‘I’ll lead,’ said Knight to Gheeta.
He sauntered slowly over to the dispatchers with Singh behind him. He acted as though he was interested in the wall screen, pointing at it as they moved along the line until he was within a few feet from the end dispatcher. Suddenly Knight took two fast steps to behind the man and pulled his chair backwards at such a speed that the dispatcher fell backwards onto the floor, where Knight twisted him onto his face, pushed one knee into his back, pulled both arms behind him and had the cuffs on in seconds. Gheeta stepped forward and pulled the phone jack plug from the console socket, unplugged the laptop that the dispatcher had been using and closed it. Knight pulled the man to his feet and slammed him face first against the wall; Singh went across and told him why he was being arrested and read him his rights. Knight patted him down, emptied his pockets and found a rather nasty six-inch blade velcro-strapped to his right ankle. He pulled it off and showed it to the man.
‘Tut, tut, tut, I don’t think this is for cutting your sandwiches, is it? Mandatory five years now for possession of a knife – unless you’ve got previous, which you probably have, then it’s up to the judge what he adds on.’
He roughly pushed the man out through the call centre to the squad car, followed by Singh carrying the laptop.
Palmer went to the glass double door and addressed the startled staff. He had a knack of being able to calm down a situation. A knack he’d honed to perfection as a young constable often called to bar brawls in the East end.
‘Excitement over for today – carry on as normal please, nothing to worry about. Purely routine.’
Of course the hubbub was never going to die down straight away after that little episode. He turned back to Court.
‘Calm them down, Mr Court. Phones are ringing, people want their takeaways.’
Court nodded and spoke loudly to his staff.
‘It’s all right everybody, nothing to do with us. Carry on please, all finished now – back to business.’
The place calmed down.
‘Now I suggest you ring your solicitor, Mr Court. Tell him to meet us at the Yard. Do you have a coat?
‘What? Why have I got to go with you? You got their man.’
‘It’s a triple murder enquiry, Mr Court. You are involved, so I need a statement.’
‘You’re kidding, I can’t do that. What about my daughter? Once they find out what happened they’ll stop her supply or...or worse.’ He was starting to panic.
‘Where is she, at home?’
‘No.’
Court paused and looked painfully at Palmer.
‘In a squat.’
Palmer understood the implications of that.
‘Okay. What about the wife and any other family members?’
‘Divorced. I have two sons who are with my ex.’
‘Where?’
‘Scotland, Inverness.’
‘Do the Arifs know about them.’
‘I don’t think so, they’ve never mentioned it.’
‘Good. I’ll have Social Services meet us at the Yard, and when we have your statement yo
u can take them to wherever your daughter is and they will take her into a secure protective rehabilitation hostel. After that you can collect anything you need from home and then you’ll go into a safe house until this is over. Understand?’
‘What about the business?’
‘You must have an assistant who can manage it, what happens when you’re on holiday or ill’?
‘Yes, yes I can get it covered.’
He indicated a young chap leaning over a telephonist in the call centre.
‘John can manage it, he’s Assistant Manager.’
‘Right, do that now then. Tell him you’ve got a family problem come up and could be away for a few days.’
CHAPTER 12
It all went surprisingly well. Court gave a long statement. He couldn’t identify the Arifs from their mug shots, which wasn’t surprising as they always stayed ‘off camera’ and had others do their business for them, so Palmer couldn’t get an arrest warrant issued. Their dispatcher had a solicitor at the Yard almost before he was after his one entitled phone call, and a stream of ‘no comment’ answers was the outcome of his interview with DS Knight, but that was to be expected. Court’s daughter Helen was pulled from the squat by Social Services and the local police using a quickly signed judges warrant for ‘protection of an underage person in danger’ order, and Court was taken to a safe house in Ruislip.
It was getting towards late afternoon, and Palmer was thinking of calling it a day after he had read through the transcript from Court’s interview, when the call from AC Bateman’s office came in summoning him upstairs.
He walked across to the Team Room where Singh and Knight were doing their daily report sheets as Claire updated the progress chart. It had taken the threat of disciplinary action in an official note from the records office to get Palmer finally to complete Daily Report sheets. Bateman insisted on having them regardless of whether his officers had anything to report or not. If he had time and the inclination Palmer would extend his report to include what he had for lunch, how many coffees he had drunk, the number of visits to the toilet and the number of times the damn coffee machine on his floor had swallowed his twenty pence and delivered nothing or delivered his coffee but no cup first.
‘You three get off home when you’ve done those damn reports – good day today. Tomorrow I think we will get back on track to find the killer, and from what you said Knight, I think we ought to take a closer look at this Wellbeck character.’
He gave them a nod, which was the nearest Palmer ever came to a compliment.
He took the stairs to the fifth floor, gave a hardly audible tap on Bateman’s door and went in. Bateman was watering his pot plants on the windowsill with a small watering can and jumped when Palmer entered unexpectedly, causing the can to water his highly polished shoes.
‘You are supposed to wait for me to say ‘come in’ when you knock Palmer, not just barge in. I might have been having a meeting, or be with somebody else.’
‘Sorry Sir’, Palmer lied. ‘I was told you wanted to see me?’
Bateman rubbed his shoes with a cloth.
‘Sit down, Palmer.’
Palmer sat in the ‘guest’ chair in front of Bateman’s large desk, and Bateman sat in his ‘power’ chair behind it. It was common knowledge that the ‘guest’ chair in Bateman’s office was shorter-legged than Bateman’s own chair, so that he adopted the ‘power’ position of having his guests having to raise their eyes to meet his – a well-known tactic amongst recruitment and personnel people. It was also a well-known Bateman tactic amongst his senior officers, who usually declined the offer to ‘sit down’ and stood by the desk, making Bateman the one to have to raise his eye line. Today Palmer couldn’t be bothered.
‘This delivery boy serial murder case,’ Bateman began. ‘I see you have seconded one of Organised Crime’s officers?’
He raised his eyebrows as a question mark.
‘I could do with a couple more, too.’
This was not the answer Bateman wanted.
‘I think you are deliberately missing the point, Palmer. Any transfer of officers between departments has to be authorised.’
‘DCS Long authorised it, Sir.’
‘By me, Palmer, authorised by me and this office, and by formal request using the correct paperwork.’
‘It was rather urgent Sir. Three murders already, and Forensics led us to believe them to be drug-related so it seemed obvious to get an experienced narco officer on board.’
‘Narco?’
‘Narcotics. I really could do with some extra bodies too, Sir. We seem to have stumbled into a drug war – need some surveillance officers, five or six should do it. I’ll do the paperwork tomorrow.’
Palmer made to stand and leave.
‘Sit down, Palmer.’
‘Is there something else, sir?’
Bateman knew he was being tied in knots. He hated Palmer. Palmer was all that Bateman didn’t like about the police: old school detectives with great arrest and case clear-up records that skipped and ignored, or tried to ignore, all the reporting and other paperwork that he thought so important. He was right of course; if you went to trial with any piece of required paperwork missing, the eagle-eyed criminal defence lawyers of today would seize on it as a ‘non disclosure’ item and get an acquittal. But how he got that into the mindset of the likes of Palmer’s old school ‘chase ‘em, nick ‘em and bang ‘em up’ method of policing was proving difficult, which is why he had offered the likes of Palmer and Long early retirement packages with enhanced benefits, in the hope they would accept them and leave. All had been rejected. After several attempts he had decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
‘No, nothing else Palmer.’
He knew that once this case got out to the press and media, being a serial murder it would make headlines, so the last thing he wanted was for the case officer to complain he hadn’t enough officers. Palmer wouldn’t do that publicly of course, but over the years in the force he had made many friends in the media, and a quiet private word here and there would instigate a story about ‘cut-backs affecting the progress of the case’ from an ‘unnamed source’.
‘Get the paperwork to me and I’ll see you have the resources you need.’
Bateman waved a dismissive hand.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Palmer was smiling inside. He took the stairs down to his floor two at a time as a self-congratulatory skip in winning that round with Bateman. When his sciatic pain stabbed his right thigh halfway down, he reverted to painful single steps and cursed his exuberance.
CHAPTER 13
When the Serial Murder Squad needed extra people, Palmer had a list of well-trusted and seasoned detectives that he had worked with over the years who would be very willing to sacrifice their day off to come in and help him out. Plus, of course, they got paid overtime rate. So it was no surprise to Gheeta that the first four she phoned on his behalf were only too pleased to come in; whether their wives or girlfriends were equally as pleased, we will never know.
The next morning they sat in the Team Room. Gheeta and Knight brought them up to speed as Palmer took a quick trip down to OC and had DCS Peter Long go through the file on Sammy Wellbeck. It was quite a thick file. Long made a copy and Palmer scurried back up to his department.
‘Aha! Familiar faces.’
He beamed at his new foursome.
‘Well, Messrs Harvard, Trent, Patel and Russell, welcome back lads. Good to have you with us again.’
All murmured their happiness at being there, and it was an honest happiness. Detectives and uniformed officers genuinely liked to work with Palmer and any of the other, now dwindling, old school officers. They knew that Palmer had come through the ranks; he’d walked the nasty beats, he’d roughed it with the villains who wouldn’t be taken quietly, and he’d done it before tasers, body cams and stop-and-search had made it a bit easier. But on the other side of the coin th
ings had become harder with no-win-no-fee lawyers taking every lying utterance from a villain complaining that he had been assaulted at the police station as gospel truth and then wasting days of police time in court trying to manufacture a false case to make a claim and keep half of it in exorbitant fees. Since he took over the Serial Murder Squad it had a one hundred-percent case-solved record which went down well with his detectives and with his political masters, although not quite so well with AC Bateman and the fifth floor, who had found it a barrier to getting rid of him through enforced retirement.
‘Okay then,’ Palmer continued. ‘I think we have disrupted the Arifs’ delivery system, but the question now is do we go after them or do we go after the Wellbecks? I think we go for the Wellbecks because we think they are the ones responsible for the killings. Knight here has experience in the OC drugs department, so his input is paramount. I have just had a briefing with DCS Long on the Wellbecks, and I get the impression they are a nasty bunch. DS Knight?’
He handed the floor over to Knight.
‘A very nasty bunch Sir,’ Knight said, taking the reins. ‘Sammy Wellbeck and his wife Chrissie have ruled the London Central drug scene for about fifteen years. They are a very business-like firm; their base is a scrap yard in Hackney which has a Fort Knox type security system: CCTVs everywhere, a solid tall wall with razor wire on top, and two trusted lieutenants who have been with them since the early days. We’ve raided them twice when we’ve had good intel that drugs were on the premises and both times they’ve come up clean. Forensic swabs showed that cocaine had been there but we couldn’t even find a speck of it. They knew we were coming.’
‘You’ve got a leak in your department then,’ Palmer said.
‘We must have. Our information was good, but Organised Crime is a big department and to do a raid with Firearms people involved as well means a lot of officers are in the loop.’
‘How did the Wellbecks start? Claire asked, scrolling her monitor screen. ‘There’s absolutely nothing on file.’
‘There won’t be – as I said before they are a very clever pair, always out of the picture; experts in delegating others to arrange and carry out their work. They had the usual early career, started by offering protection to clubs and pubs – if the club or pub refused, Wellbeck sent a few idiots in and they would start a fight and do as much damage to the premises as they could. Next day in went Sammy or one of his men again, and this time the owner was more open to a deal on protection. He’d get a couple of doormen from Sammy, and in exchange Sammy would install a row of fruit machines and take the money, plus he’d supply a lot of the booze from stolen lorries at cheap prices for cash; he ended up with most of the licensed premises in his pocket. Then he went into the second-hand car and scrap metal business, bought the yard and bribed his way into most of the car insurance companies to take their write-offs at a standard price; makes a fortune from the parts his mechanics salvage and sells on the rest as scrap to the steel companies. That’s the legal bit. The illegal bit is the cocaine. We reckon he is amongst the top ten narco importers in the UK. He gets his supply from Peru, and he pays on receipt, as do most of the major importers...’
TAKEAWAY TERROR: The DCS Palmer and the Serial Murder Squad series. Case No.8 Page 5