Above Suspicion at-1

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘No, that started later.’

  ‘So, it’s possible Daniels could have driven to Brighton.’

  ‘But how would he know she was there?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘Maybe he asked your Cuban friend, back on Old Compton Street. Or perhaps when she was questioned, she found out who he was and contacted him. It could have been that way round.’

  ‘I’ll check it out,’ he yawned and rubbed his eyes.

  Anna returned to her desk and looked over the memos that had collected while she was away. She asked Jean: ‘Am I on lates tonight?’

  ‘Yes, with the gov and Lewis out.’

  ‘Right.’ She stood up. ‘I’d better get a bite to eat in the canteen.’

  ‘Be a love and file this for me, on the way.’

  Anna collected the file Jean held up, but before filing it away she skimmed the report which detailed the information so far received on McDowell. As she stood by the cabinet, her reading started to slow down. She had reached the description of McDowell’s car: a cream Mercedes-Benz. She hesitated and then placed the file in order. Now she opened another drawer and flipped through the files until she found one detailing the vehicle history for Alan Daniels. Then she found what she was looking for. The place Alan Daniels had sent his Mercedes to be crushed was called Wreckers Limited.

  ‘I thought you were getting something to eat?’

  Anna returned to her desk and picked up her notebook. ‘Jean, the driver I had this afternoon, is he from downstairs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I can’t remember, off the top of my head. PC

  Moira supplied it. ‘PC Gordon White.’

  ‘Thank you. Can you do me a favour and see if he’s still around?’

  ‘He was in the canteen a minute ago,’ Jean offered.

  She and Moira watched Anna bang out of the incident room and exchanged bemused smiles.

  PC Gordon White had just finished off a plate of steak and kidney pie when he noticed Anna advancing on him from the other end of the canteen.

  ‘Gordon, could you do something for me?’

  ‘Of course,’ he responded.

  On the table in front of him, Anna laid down the photograph of a car identical to the Mercedes formerly owned by Alan Daniels.

  White nodded approvingly. ‘Mercedes, drop head 280SL; lovely motor.’

  ‘If someone had a prang,’ Anna began earnestly, ‘not a car smash, mind, just a prang, how costly do you think it would be to repair?’

  ‘Depends. They’re a very heavy car and they got big bumpers,’ he said solemnly. ‘They cost. If it was just the bodywork, you could probably be looking at a couple of grand, but they don’t have spare parts for them over the counter, since it’s a seventy-one model, so you’d need to go to someone dealing in those specific parts.’ He grinned. ‘Or you could come to me.’

  ‘There’s a company called Wreckers Limited. A breakers’ or crusher yard.’

  ‘Yes, it’s up in Watford.’

  ‘Could you take me there?’

  ‘Now? I’m off duty.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean … This is sort of private. Could we go in the morning, first thing? I’d just like you there when I talk to them.’

  ‘I’m on at three to nine tomorrow. I could meet you there, say at ten in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Anna said gratefully. ‘I’ll be there at ten.’

  McDowell’s solicitor was wearing a neat grey suit and blouse. She looked like she was in her early twenties.

  They had waited for over three-quarters of an hour from the time she was phoned for her to turn up. In that time, McDowell had started to sweat profusely. When he drank some water, his body was shaking so badly that he had to steady the cup in both of his massive hands. He was being co-operative and answering their questions; he just badly needed a drink. When first of all he was shown a photograph of Lilian Duffy, he volunteered her name straight away. He agreed that for a very brief time he had lived at the house in Shallcotte Street. Langton asked him if he knew Lilian’s son, Anthony Duffy.

  ‘Yeah, I knew him.’ Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead. ‘Right little sod he was, Lilian’s son.’

  ‘Tell me what you know about him,’ Langton said quietly.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ McDowell sighed. ‘One of my girls, a really lovely kid, had upped and left me. I’d heard she’d moved into Lilian’s doss house, so I went over there. They said Lilian was out on the street. I finally found her with her dress up round her waist in an alley, her and a punter, having it away. I pull him off her. He starts throwing a few punches so I give him a slap. She starts kicking and screaming. I get her by the throat, say I want to know where my girl was. The next minute, this fucking kid is on my back, punching me head in. I don’t even think she knew it was her kid. Anyway, when I heard the ding-dong, I left her on the ground. I didn’t want to get involved with cops; this was when I was trying to start my club, right? Next I hear, she’s been taken in. She’s so out of it, she says she’s been assaulted. She didn’t even know it was me who grabbed her, she was that far gone.’

  ‘I need to get something straight.’ Langton rubbed his head. ‘You assaulted Lilian. Her son, Anthony Duffy, broke up the fight. But when she reported the incident, she said that it was her son that had beaten her up, not you.’

  ‘That’s right. They do the whole business: get a doctor in to check her out, take her statement. They pick up her kid and then she denies everything. Do you mind?’ He took one of Langton’s cigarettes.

  ‘Were you arrested over the incident?’

  ‘Fuck, no. By then I knew to stay well clear of that bunch of whores. It was one of her drippers told me.’

  ‘Can you recall the next time you saw Anthony Duffy?’

  His brow puckered, as he sucked the cigarette he held with his shaking hand.

  ‘Not sure. He used to just turn up. He’d be about sixteen, I guess. The time I remember, he kicked down the back door, yelling for her. He needed a passport. He’d got some school trip he wanted to go on and he’d had to come round for his birth certificate. He’s ranting and raving, really uptight about wanting his fucking birth certificate and she’s screaming that she doesn’t know where it is. And he hits her. Then she whacks him back. And I sort of broke them up. I remember, she started chucking stuff out of drawers and he was beside himself, crying at one point. Then she finds it. And she just throws it at him.’

  McDowell started gulping at his beaker of water.

  ‘Then her kid looks at the birth certificate and asks why it’s blank for who was his father. She could be a real mean bitch.’

  ‘Go on, Mr McDowell,’ Langton said patiently.

  ‘She just laughed. Said she had no fucking idea; told him he could put in any name he could think of. And he, Anthony, her kid, stood there with this scrap of paper, crying. Because all the boys at school would know he didn’t have a father.’

  He described how Lilian had snatched the birth certificate back and written on the document which she threw back at him. The boy had read the name out loud. Burt Reynolds. ‘I guess he was her favourite film star. When he read what she had written, I’ve never seen such …’ McDowell frowned. ‘He had these big eyes and they went like chips of ice.’

  Langton asked McDowell if he had murdered Lilian Duffy. He blinked a few times, surprised, and shook his head.

  One by one, Langton placed on to the table the photographs of the victims. When he saw Barbara Whittle, McDowell immediately identified her as one of the women in Shallcotte Street. He also admitted knowing victims three and four, Sandra Donaldson and Kathleen Keegan. Kathleen, he volunteered, had a number of kids but they had all been taken away by Social Services.

  ‘Kathleen was a terrible woman; sold her own kids to sickos. You know, for the paedophiles. I think she even messed around with Anthony.’

  ‘What was that?’ Langton leaned closer.

  ‘I heard she had
used him, too, when he was a little kid. He was a very pretty little boy. Keegan would have used her own grandmother for money.’

  When the picture of Mary Murphy was presented, McDowell easily identified her. He told them she had stayed at Shallcotte Street until it was demolished and then moved on. But when Langton showed him the photograph of Beryl Villiers there was a different reaction. He started to sob uncontrollably. He fell to a sitting position on the floor, his hands covering his head, moaning that Beryl was his little girl; the only one he had ever loved. Lewis and Langton had found another piece of the jigsaw. McDowell had been the man Beryl had run away from Leicester to be with. He had met her at the health spa where he had been the manager.

  Although they tried to proceed with the questioning, McDowell lost control. Not only was he sobbing and shaking, but as he cried, spittle formed in globules at the sides of his mouth. A doctor was called in, who said he was going through the DTs and would be unable to talk coherently for some time. Now the duty sergeant brought up the fact that McDowell was due to be released. It was doubtful they would get an extension to hold him for any longer. If they took him before the magistrate court first thing in the morning asking to remand him in custody, the most they would get would be three days.

  ‘But he had a bag of tabs on him as well,’ Langton snapped.

  ‘Which is why we reckon the magistrates won’t grant him bail.’

  ‘Do what you can. We’ll be back in the morning to requestion him.’

  By the time they left the station, exhausted, it was already half past seven in the evening. They still did not know if McDowell had been in London or travelled to the United States. They doubted it, but he was nevertheless in the frame and they had a search warrant for McDowell’s basement and a warrant for his Mercedes to be towed from the pound and examined for evidence.

  Two uniformed officers from the Greater Manchester Police accompanied them to search McDowell’s flat. The steps leading down to it were littered with used food cartons, syringes and beer cans. The stink of urine was overpowering. They used wire clippers to open up the padlocks and gain entry to the dark, squalid flat. The carpet was wet under the feet, as a toilet was overflowing.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Lewis murmured. The old electricity box had been rewired, illegally; it was connected to the street-lights. The kitchen was full of empty vodka bottles. There was a loaf of stale bread on the counter and mice droppings everywhere.

  Off the damp corridor, one room was empty, another boarded up. The last room was McDowell’s bedroom. They prised the padlocks away from the door. Inside, the room seemed more habitable than the rest of the flat. There was a TV set, a coffee maker and a wardrobe. One wall was lined with black and white curling photographs, mostly of women draped over those familiar sloping shoulders and minor celebrities at his nightclub. The younger McDowell had been quite a handsome ladies’ man. There were a few colour snapshots of him in a T-shirt, showing off his muscles. In a corner was a set of weights and barbells.

  ‘How the mighty have fallen,’ Langton murmured, softly.

  They found more empty vodka bottles stashed in drawers and under the bed, as well as some full ones in the wardrobe. Their methodical search yielded old newspaper cuttings, books, a stack of pornographic videos and magazines, knuckledusters, a cosh, two flick knives and a pillowslip containing some women’s dirty underwear.

  Langton lifted up the old frayed carpets, which revealed a hoard of cocaine, Ecstasy tabs and a bag of marijuana.

  ‘We can keep him for as long as we like,’ he said, feeling drained.

  Lewis showed him a handful of US travel brochures.

  ‘You found a passport anywhere?’

  Lewis and the two uniformed officers shook their heads. As the two uniforms moved out into the hall, Lewis asked his gov quietly, ‘What do you think? Is it him?’

  ‘Could be,’ Langton said uncertainly.

  One of the officers appeared at the door. ‘Sir, you want to come and look at this.’

  Near the front door beside the electricity meter was a cupboard which they had forced open. Hidden beneath a torn blanket were several women’s handbags, covered in what looked like brick dust.

  Langton kneeled down. He looped his pen underneath a strap and drew it towards him. With a handkerchief in his hand, he opened the bag. Inside were a wallet, cheap perfume, a powder compact and a packet of condoms. He eased out the wallet and examined it.

  ‘Jesus.’ He turned to Lewis. ‘This belonged to Kathleen Keegan.’

  Langton told the officers they had better not touch anything else. It was time to call in a forensic team.

  By ten o’clock they were back at the police station. McDowell was shouting in the cells below that the walls were full of cockroaches. Though a doctor had administered a sedative, it had yet to kick in. They waited in the room allocated, as the evidence was brought in plastic zipped-up containers: three women’s handbags, contents listed and bagged. One they already knew belonged to Kathleen Keegan; the others were identified as those of Barbara Whittle and Sandra Donaldson.

  In the station car park, arc lamps had been set up and the forensic team was making an inch-by-inch search of McDowell’s Mercedes. So far, all they had discovered were half bottles of vodka beneath the seats and two rocks of cocaine and a crack-pipe in the glove compartment.

  Langton and Lewis adjourned to a nearby pub, where they nursed a double Scotch and a gin and tonic respectively. They touched glasses.

  ‘A good day’s work,’ Langton commented.

  ‘Does this mean Alan Daniels is off the hook?’ asked Lewis.

  Langton stared into his Scotch for a moment, then drained it. ‘So it would seem, Mike. So it would seem.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Anna stood by the corrugated-iron gates that led into Wreckers Limited just outside Watford. She was waiting for PC Gordon White.

  The yard was at the end of a small, terraced row of houses. The wall was over eight feet high and big hoops of barbed wire were nailed to the top. She could peer into the breakers’ yard through a crack.

  She spun around when she heard the car, a Corvette. White got out, nodding at it proudly. ‘A heap of rust before I got my hands on it.’

  ‘It’s amazing.’ When she rested her briefcase on its bonnet, he grimaced and she quickly lifted it off. She took out the photographs of the Mercedes 280SL.

  ‘How much do these cars cost?’

  ‘Depends on the condition. You could pick up one in need of a lot of renovation for five or six grand, maybe even less. It’s a 1970s model, so you’ve got to have a massive mileage.’

  ‘How about one in this condition?’

  ‘Well, if it was remodelled, hood in perfect condition, with no rust and the engine in good nick, you could pay anything up to fifty thousand.’

  ‘Fifty?’

  ‘They’re collectors’ items. The hubcaps alone are worth over a couple of hundred.’

  She asked about the process of crushing vehicles.

  ‘If you’ve written your car off and the insurance company is in agreement, you can wheel it in here. The charge for crushing it isn’t that much.’

  Anna chewed her lip. ‘So whoever owned this Mercedes, for example, if he wanted the insurance, would have had his insurance company look at it to say it wasn’t roadworthy.’

  ‘With a car this valuable, they’d want to look at it.’

  ‘If he described the damage as just a prang, would they pay for it to be crushed? Or would they pay for repairs?’

  ‘Depends on how bad the prang was. Though it wouldn’t really be logical to crush this. They’ve got beautiful steering wheels, nice big round ones, some made of wood, that would be worth salvaging; dashboard, even; ditto the hubcaps. It would make more sense to split it up, for resale of the spare parts.’

  Anna nodded. ‘OK, let’s do it.’

  ‘Do what, exactly?’

  ‘Find out about the Mercedes that was brought here.’ She replace
d the photograph in her briefcase. ‘It’s connected to a case I’m working on.’

  ‘Insurance fiddle, is it?’

  ‘More serious than that.’

  White, intrigued, eased back the corrugated gate.

  Wreckers Limited was far bigger inside than she had thought. The noise was deafening. A forklift truck was lifting a wreck from a pile of about fifty cars over to a massive dumper truck. It was released with a crash. Huge wheels gobbled up the rusted heap.

  Rising twenty feet in the air on the other side came something that looked like a Big Dipper. Moving down the rods were cubes of metal: crushed cars.

  ‘You’d be amazed how many villains have departed this world inside those square remains,’ White said above the din.

  Some distance from the pile of wrecks, a man wearing red braces over an open-necked shirt and a cloth cap stood on the steps of a caravan, shading his eyes to watch them. They headed towards him.

  ‘Good morning,’ Anna said loudly.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Is this your yard?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, is this your yard?’

  The man yelled to the driver of the forklift truck. ‘Turn it off, Jim. Turn it off!’

  While they waited for the silence, Anna showed her ID. ‘Could I talk to you?’

  He gestured for them to follow him into the caravan. Documents littered almost every available wall space, pinned up and clipped together. There were boxes spilling out more paper on to every surface: a moth-eaten sofa, two armchairs and a desk with one broken leg propped up with tatty old telephone directories.

  ‘This is Constable White. We’re here to discuss a Mercedes-Benz convertible.’ She gave the vehicle identification and registration numbers.

  The man nodded. ‘You know, I had another copper enquiring about the same car two weeks ago.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘So how can I help you?’

  ‘Could you tell me who brought the car to you?’

  When he removed his greasy cloth cap, there was a red sweat ring around his forehead. ‘Chap came. He wanted the car crushed. He paid his fifty quid and he left. That’s all there is to know.’