‘Will do.’
As Ben hurried away, Grace nevertheless wished that Lance were here. She’d always valued his brisk and honest insights, and she would feel far more confident facing a task of this scale knowing he had her back covered. She’d been tempted before she left police HQ to call and ask him to come in, but her finger had hesitated too long over the icon on her phone. Lance might still be too upset and flaky to be reliable. She felt rotten even thinking like that about him, but his possible volatility would be a distraction when she needed to focus clearly. The adrenalin release in the first minutes after the initial call had offered a welcome respite from her recent hamster-wheel thoughts, but she must guard against an overreaction. It was vital for a senior investigating officer to review calmly the incoming flood of tasks and information, and she mustn’t let anxiety force her into tunnel vision.
Her first priority, now that the area had been secured, was to identify the victim. It might have been a random shooting, but if not the identity of the seventy-year-old would yield valuable clues to the killer’s motive. She checked her phone: Duncan had already emailed her the details of the A & E consultant who had formally pronounced life extinct.
She found Dr Mason busy with a patient in the Accident and Emergency Department and had to wait until he’d finished. He looked much the same age as her, sported a single earring and a ponytail, and appeared totally unfazed by what had happened. He took her aside, swiftly and calmly switching his entire concentration onto her.
‘He was almost certainly dead before he hit the ground,’ he told her. ‘By chance, it was a colleague who got to him first. An ex-army medic, so he realized immediately what he was dealing with.’
‘Good. We’ll need to speak to him.’
‘Sure. We found the victim’s hospital appointment letter in his coat pocket, so we could look up his records.’ He flicked through a clipboard on a cluttered desk next to a red telephone and detached two sheets of paper stapled neatly together. ‘Here you go. Mr Gordon Church. Looks like his first appointment with us. Referred on from Peterborough, where he was being treated for terminal lung cancer.’ Dr Mason gave a wry smile. ‘Who knows, maybe this was a mercy killing.’
‘OK, thanks.’ Grace looked at the printed name. Gordon Church seemed somehow familiar, but she couldn’t think why.
‘I should get back to work,’ said Dr Mason. ‘Bleep me if you need me.’
The victim’s name niggled at her memory, so she went out to the corridor to use her phone to check online. A page of recent entries came up straight away, reminding her of the short-lived tabloid furore sparked by the revelation of his recent release from prison. In 1981 Gordon Church, a career criminal, had shot dead two police constables who stopped his car as he attempted to flee after an armed robbery at a post office in Beckenham. He had received a sentence of life without parole but was released on compassionate grounds in order to receive proper palliative care. The tabloids had called for legislative change so police killers remained in prison for life, and had quoted the Police Federation’s declaration that the release of the dying man was ‘sickening and abhorrent’.
As Grace made her way back outside through the maze of hospital corridors, an idea leaped into her mind and lodged itself there: might this incident be linked to the two homicides she’d unearthed in Ely and Grantham, where the victims had also been shot by sniper-style rifle fire? Or was she finding patterns where none existed? It was unprofessional even to entertain such rapid assumptions when an inquiry had barely got under way – especially when Colchester, a garrison town, had no shortage of trained military personnel with access to weapons – but the notion had lodged itself in her brain and refused to be pushed aside. Annoyed with herself, she resorted to counting her footsteps to try to clear her mind, but the stubborn thought remained: a convicted paedophile, an Albanian gangmaster and now a double cop-killer, and all three shootings executed within a hundred-mile radius of each other.
44
The autopsy X-rays the following morning revealed bullet fragments, and Dr Tripathi confirmed that Gordon Church had in fact been shot twice in the heart. As Grace watched him extract bullet fragments from the mutilated muscle and flesh, and listened to him explain how their limited penetration suggested hollow-point ammunition, she dared to believe that perhaps her instinctive hunch might not be so far-fetched after all.
She thanked Samit and made her way back to HQ trying not to think about the pale scrawny body on the pathologist’s metal table. A prison tan, they called it. Even if Gordon Church had not been ravaged by heavy smoking and lung cancer, thirty-five years of prison food and limited exercise and sunlight had done little for the imposing thug depicted in the photographs taken at the time of his arrest and reprinted by the tabloids when he’d been released. She did not feel sorry for him: wielding a sawn-off shotgun with his face distorted by a nylon stocking, he must have appeared horribly menacing, literally the stuff of nightmares, to the couple who ran the post office, let alone the two brave unarmed officers he’d gunned down in cold blood. Yet she couldn’t help but feel some pity for such a waste of humanity.
As Grace walked into the MIT office, she was surprised to see Lance at his desk. Intent on his computer screen, he merely glanced up as she passed behind him. She lightly touched his shoulder and went on into Colin’s office, where she brought him up to speed on the preliminary post-mortem results before nodding out towards the main office. ‘So Lance came in?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I called him. All hands on deck,’ said Colin.
‘And he seems all right?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ said Colin. ‘He’s much better off here than moping alone at home.’
She returned to her desk to fetch the rest of her notes for the daily briefing as the assembled team began moving chairs and shuffling notepads. Colin opened by thanking everyone for their hard work and announcing that the chief constable had granted his request for additional resources for the inquiry. He then handed over to Grace.
‘Let’s start with witnesses,’ she said. ‘Church was unaccompanied. No one saw the shooter, and, given that the car park was relatively busy, surprisingly few heard the shots, suggesting he used a silencer. I spoke to the ex-army medic who was the first to reach Church after he collapsed to the ground. Luckily the medic had the experience to realize almost immediately that Church had been shot and, from how and where he had been hit, instinctively noted the likely direction of fire.’ She turned to Duncan. ‘What else have we got?’
‘Four other witnesses in the car park heard two shots, one immediately after the other,’ said Duncan. ‘Their statements tallied with the medic’s opinion, which narrows down the shooter’s likely location.’
‘Which also meant we could get at least some of the area reopened to traffic,’ said Colin. ‘That helped improve relations with the hospital managers.’
Grace turned to the crime scene manager. ‘Wendy?’
‘As you know, there are two visitor parking areas, here and here,’ said Wendy, pointing to a large diagrammatic map on the evidence board. ‘All the witness statements suggest that the shooter was over here, at the far edge of the western car park. We made an initial forensic sweep of the eastern car park yesterday before conducting a fingertip search of the western area. This morning we recovered two spent brass casings from this point here.’ Wendy’s face glowed with satisfaction. ‘They’re from rifle rounds and have been sent to ballistics with a request to fast-track them.’
‘Any other marks on the casings?’ asked Grace.
Wendy nodded and smiled. ‘Military head stamps.’
‘Effective firing range for a rifle is up to five hundred metres,’ said Grace, trying to conceal how desperate she was to know whether the casings would turn out to bear the same marks as those recovered in Dunholt and elsewhere. ‘The victim was alone on the little footbridge over the water feature leading from the car park to the main entrance of the hospital,’ she continued. ‘The footbridge is s
lightly raised, giving the shooter a clear line of fire.’
Wendy pointed again to the map. ‘The spent casings were found here, on the edge of the perimeter road leading in and out of the car park.’
‘Two of the witnesses who heard shots recall noticing a silver or metallic-grey van, not big, with a side-opening door, head at speed along the perimeter road towards the exit to the main road soon afterwards,’ said Duncan. ‘He’d want to avoid having to stop at the ticket barrier, so probably never entered the car park.’
‘If he was firing from the back of a van,’ said Colin, ‘he’s not likely to have jumped out and scrabbled around after ejected shell casings.’
‘No,’ said Grace. ‘Though that does also suggest that he might not have been alone. He could have had a driver. Which would alter the psychological profile somewhat and mean he’s not necessarily a lone Unabomber type. That’s something to bear in mind.’
‘The descriptions of the van are hazy,’ said Duncan, ‘but the very fact that the witnesses associated it with what they heard makes it significant.’
‘We’re checking roadside cameras around the hospital within the likely timeframe to see what comes up,’ said Joan, who was the team’s civilian case manager.
‘OK, good work. Let’s move on to victimology,’ said Grace. ‘If Gordon Church was deliberately targeted, then who knew his whereabouts? There’s been plenty of coverage about his release but not a word to link him to Colchester.’
‘For the past eleven years he’s been in HMP Wayleigh Heath.’ Lance spoke for the first time. ‘His release three weeks ago was unexpected. He was never sent to a lower-category prison first.’
‘We need to know who leaked news of his release to the media,’ said Grace. ‘His hospital appointment could have been set up before he was let out.’
‘Talk to his lawyers too,’ said Colin.
‘Some legal aid solicitor who thinks they’re not paid enough,’ quipped someone at the back of the room.
‘Church actually did a lot of the legal work himself,’ said Lance. ‘He’s been inside since 1981. Had time to take three Open University degrees, including jurisprudence and law.’
‘All paid for by honest taxpayers.’
Lance ignored the disgruntled mutter from another corner of the room. ‘He started his own appeal process when he first received his terminal cancer diagnosis, and then got a barrister pro bono.’
‘From some right-on chi-chi chambers in London, no doubt,’ grumbled someone else.
‘Good riddance. Shooter’s done everyone a favour.’
‘Should’ve been left to rot in jail.’
‘With no pain relief.’
‘Shooting’s too good for him.’
Grace had expected this. No one liked a cop-killer, and she couldn’t blame the team’s resentment at having to work overtime on behalf of the likes of Gordon Church. She let them get it all out of their system before picking up the thread.
‘So, he’s living in a bail hostel. Apart from the people there, who else was likely to know that he was receiving hospital treatment here in Colchester?’
‘We haven’t traced any family or friends who are still in contact,’ said Lance. ‘Apart from lawyers, his last prison visit was at least five years ago.’
‘What about hospital staff?’ asked Duncan. ‘Or his GP practice, or the prison MO who referred him?’
‘And prison officers, the governor, probation services?’ suggested another voice.
‘They’ll all have to be checked out,’ said Grace. ‘Though it’s unlikely any of them would have known the precise time of his appointment yesterday.’ She hesitated before adding to the list: ‘He was out on licence. He’d have to report regularly to the local nick.’
‘You mean us,’ said Duncan with an unfamiliar growl in his voice.
Grace held up her hands against the immediate groundswell of hostility. ‘I know, I know. But we have to be seen to be scrupulous. And in any case whoever’s been dealing with him might have useful intelligence. Get me a name and I’ll speak to them myself, to show respect, OK?’
‘Ruth Woods handles offender management,’ said Duncan.
Grace gave him a smile: she should have known his thoroughness would have got there before her. She was also relieved. Ruth was observant and smart, and unlikely to be too prickly about routine questions. ‘OK,’ she said to the assembled team. ‘I think that’s it for now. Thank you all very much.’
She waited while Colin had an extra word with Wendy, and then followed him back into his office. Now that the autopsy and the recovered casings confirmed that a rifle and hollow-point ammunition had been used in this incident, she wanted to float the idea as soon as possible that it might be connected to the other two fatal shootings. She set out her case that they might have a vigilante on their hands, playing slightly to the pleasure she knew Colin took in being the public face of any sensitive or high-profile story. He seized on the idea, welcomed her suggestion that Colchester MIT pool intelligence with the senior investigating officers in Grantham and Ely, and promised to set up a meeting with the other teams at their earliest convenience.
‘I’ll brief Hilary as well,’ he said, already picking up the phone. ‘Obviously we’re nowhere near ready to go public with anything yet, but best that she’s prepared.’
Grace agreed and went back to her own desk. She wanted to stop and say a proper welcome back to Lance but decided to wait for a quieter moment. First off she wanted to speak to Ruth Woods, in case she had any useful background on Gordon Church. Ruth answered her phone immediately and said she’d been expecting someone from MIT to call, not that she had much to contribute to the inquiry: Church hadn’t required offender management because he was under supervision by his probation officer. As far as the police were concerned, all he had to do was turn up and sign in every week. Ruth had already consulted the record: the PC who had routinely signed him in had been Curtis Mullins.
Grace thanked Ruth and ended the call, sitting back and staring out of the window but seeing only the rain-streaked glass. The name had jolted her. Pure coincidence, but one more link in a long chain of coincidences. Impulsively she looked up the number for Wayleigh Heath, the maximum-security establishment where Church had been an inmate. She introduced herself and explained that other members of her team would be in touch regarding Church’s contacts during his time there, but that it would be useful meanwhile if she could quickly check one name that might be significant: had Adam Kirkby ever worked there as a prison officer?
The answer brought a palpable wave of relief. Her suspicions had been far-fetched, and Adam Kirkby had never been at Wayleigh Heath. She would still have to speak to Curtis Mullins as a matter of routine, but she must accept this as a warning not to overreact and start imagining ominous connections where there were none.
Clicking her computer screen back to life, she saw dozens of incoming emails. She opened and read those that seemed most urgent, firing off a few quick replies before checking her phone for messages. Among them was a text from Robyn Ingold. She opened it immediately. Can I see you after school today? Grace was relieved that she hadn’t after all bungled her meeting with the girl, and was composing her positive response when Colin made a polite show of knocking on her cubicle partition. She put down her phone.
‘Good news,’ he said. ‘The SIOs from the Ely and Grantham inquiries are eager to crack on. They both said they can drop everything and be here for three thirty, four at the latest.’
Grace felt a whip of frustration but had no choice but to thank Colin and express her thanks for his active support for her theory, even though the meeting would be precisely when Robyn came out of school. As Colin went away, rubbing his hands in satisfaction, she thought for a moment. If she tried to postpone, Robyn might not offer her a second chance. She had to grab this opportunity. There was only one person who already knew she’d spoken to Robyn and so could deputize for her at such short notice. She got up and left her cubicle
.
‘Lance,’ she called. ‘Can I have a quick word?’
45
Ivo should have rushed off to Colchester the moment news first broke of the execution-style hit on Gordon Church, but had invented various excuses not to. Anyway, he was here now, ready for the end-of-afternoon media conference that was timed to make the six o’clock news, even if he’d pretty much had to drag himself onto the train from Liverpool Street.
He had received the same anonymous tip-off about Church’s release from prison that had been emailed last week to all the newspapers. This even-handed approach – the sender had immediately deleted the online account – ruled out a greedy prison officer hoping to trouser some ready cash, and the hot favourites as the source of the tip-off became the families of the two police constables Church had murdered all those years ago. Ivo and his fellow cowboys had duly saddled up and ridden down to Beckenham, where the first victim’s two sons still lived. Now strapping men in their late thirties who had both followed in their father’s footsteps, they were loud and explicit in their outrage that the secretary of state for justice had considered it neither necessary nor courteous to inform them that the lowlife scum who had shot their father in the face at point-blank range with a sawn-off shotgun was about to walk free. The Courier had run a front-page photo of them out on the beat together, but the truth was that precious few readers remembered Gordon Church or cared where he got to spend his final few weeks.
With Bobbi Reynolds at the Police Federation eager to express the organization’s view that life should mean life for every cop-killer, no exceptions, regardless, end of, the story had served to whip up public support for the police, which had flagged in the light of the lies and petty conspiracies exposed by the Downing Street Plebgate row. This did of course raise the possibility that the tip-off had originated within the Home Office as some kind of ham-fisted attempt to lure the worst dinosaurs of the Federation out into the open, where they could be humanely culled. But Ivo doubted that: Gordon Church wasn’t exactly a cause worth fighting over.
Shot Through the Heart: DI Grace Fisher 2 Page 24