The Perfect Crime

by Roger Forsdyke

  TWENTY SEVEN

  The problem gnawed at him. He was not sleeping well. Gloria repeatedly told him – many times more than absolutely necessary – that he was drinking too much and still he dithered on a knife edge, worrying about everything and failing abysmally to get to grips with anything. And, much to his wife’s chagrin, losing weight in spite of the number of whisky chasers he consumed every night before bedtime.

  He stalled Olivia, telling her that he could not make enquiries too quickly or in too close a proximity to each other. He argued quite reasonably that they did not want to raise suspicions or have the finger pointed anywhere near him – which would obviously lead to her – if any of her intended victims ever raised the courage to approach the authorities. Asking too many questions at any time was the best way to arouse someone’s curiosity, if not actual suspicion. The trouble was that he had been fairly effective (unusually so, for him) in garnering the personal details of the potential marks and they were nearing the end of the first phase of the project. Groat possessed no intention of going anywhere near the actual commission of the offence, so another benefit for him of prolonging this initial phase was also to delay the inevitable moment when he would have to say goodbye to Olivia. He could not think how that scenario would be played out. Around the periphery of his worrying ran the half formed – half baked – notion that they would make love one final, wonderful time and then he would simply fade out of her life.

  Also lurking in that particular recess of his near consciousness, was the knowledge that unfortunately, he was in reality the first of her victims – and he had already started to pay. Professionally, he knew that as a matter of principle, you never, ever gave in to a blackmailer. It only encouraged them to come back for more, emboldened by the fact that the victim had paid up and not squealed.

  They talked through how she would post the letters from different locations, as she said, ‘to confuse the enemy’. Groat could not see the point of this, as they would all know from whom the demand originated, but Olivia was keen on the cloak and dagger dimension. She reasoned that if her gentlemen felt distanced from her as an agent of their problems (not quite the way she put it) then she would be able to better continue her working relationship with them. On reflection, Groat could not see that it would do any harm – apart from wasting time and travelling – so let her be. He was more concerned with getting out alive and with a wife and job still to go back to.

  There were still one or two aspects that he was not happy with, but thought it would not impact on him too much, as it would be after the fact – and post split-up. There were no plans for the security of such a large amount of cash, for a start. He advised her to open several bank and building society accounts – starting now and preferably in different names – and when the money was given to her, slowly pay in reasonable amounts. What happened to it in the meantime and where she would keep it concerned him professionally, but there needed to be a cut-off point somewhere and he considered it beyond his remit.

  The other point was how she would take delivery of the cash – if indeed there would be any to take delivery of. Groat’s experience of blackmail cases was limited, but this was, he considered, big. No, it was huge. Would the threat, whether implied or real, be sufficient to part these people from the substantial amounts she deemed them to be worth? He read the letters and saw she was instructing her ‘gentlemen’ to drop bundles of bank notes in all manner of locations. A litter bin beside a park bench; a left luggage locker, a doorway behind a parade of shops. He argued and tried to reason with her. Each one of them knew who was making the demand and what the money was for. Much safer to let them take the money to her so she could take personal delivery. She could graciously receive the contribution and, he suggested, she could extend her metaphor and give them an extra special night (he squirmed as he suggested this) as a thank you. Her plan was simply ludicrous. Unsafe, without reason, lacking in any logical purpose. She told him why she wanted it this way. They were places each of them knew. Again, she said, it was distancing her from them as a source of threat or problem to them. They could continue with their visits and pretend that someone else was the perpetrator, that they were safe with her. He, in turn, argued that it introduced many unnecessary logistical problems and would extend the time it would take her to collect. Made her vulnerable to all manner of security risks. A female, dangerously alone with potentially thousands of pounds in her bag, travelling on a bus, the underground. He argued to no avail. He previously thought that Gloria was the only one who put up the shutters. Once she made her mind up about something, that was it. Immovable, unwavering; reason with her until your eyes bled. Shout all you like, to no avail. Try to knock down the brick wall of resistance by head butting. You would not make one scintilla of difference. In fact you would only make matters worse and give yourself a sore throat and headache in the attempt.

  Not for the first time in his life, he abandoned his attempts at reason.

  *

  After a particularly disturbed night, he dragged himself out of bed and into the shower. During what fitful sleep he had managed, one of his recurring dreams intruded. Always essentially the same, he would repeatedly perform a complex task, or travel the same route. Sometimes it was on a road; the road would seamlessly transmute into a river. At other times, he would be piloting a boat along a river that became shallower and shallower until he was forced to gun it over a dried up river bed to reach the next stretch of water deep enough to keep the boat going. Physically impossible, but somehow he always just managed to do it. The dream was probably a manifestation of some deep insecurity or indecision – but apropos of what? Last night it consisted of the same routine, but through and round inside buildings. Tortuous corridors, turns, many different rooms. Circuits, never quite the same twice, but no let up. The dreams were quite clear and seemed logical at the time, but it was difficult to make sense of them, or remember them properly when he woke up. What he could recall about this, was that his route ran through the block of flats where Olivia lived and seamlessly, without break, through the New Scotland Yard building.

  In a doorway that was either in the hallway to Olivia’s flat, or a corridor in the Yard stood Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hugo Van Lesseps.

  Gradually the hot shower helped to clear his head. The faintest shadows of an idea started to form.

  Hugo Van Lesseps; he was the key.

  But how could a lowly acting detective inspector get to speak with a Deputy Assistant Commissioner? And, if he ever plucked up the courage and actually managed to gain an audience, what would he say to him?

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Gloria decided to keep the information about the Spanish properties to herself. When the attractive display stand (actually a rudimentary cardboard affair, with cheap looking, once folded leaflets accompanying it) arrived, she hid it away in the back store room, keeping one leaflet in the drawer in her desk. The agency was doing quite nicely working towards their sales targets and she did not want anyone else muscling in on this wonderful, once in a lifetime opportunity. The fact that, had the scheme been genuine, there would be hundreds of the display units with thousands of leaflets in other travel agencies around the country, did not enter her head. With all the crucial buttons pushed, Gloria was now fiercely protective of her dream and so fervently desired it to come to fruition, even quite significant incursions of reality would not deflect her.

  In short, she was hooked.

  Every so often she would look around to make sure none of her staff were looking, furtively open her drawer and look at the leaflet. If there was no one about, she would take it out, read and re-read every word and gaze longingly at the grainy newsprint images. Villas from the equivalent of £2,500, apartments from £1,500. She squeezed herself. The apartments came in several configurations, from a block of ten, up to high rise monsters with many more. In her fantasy, they would buy a block of ten apartments and a villa for their own use – and the rent they received from holiday letting
s would more than pay for any loan they might have to obtain to buy them. And what did that funny foreign man say about previous developments? They were worth ten times their initial purchase price. Blow her husband and his precious CID; his vice work and all the overtime. She would show him. She would be a woman of substance, serious wealth. It had taken them fourteen years of marriage to get a £25,000 house – and a substantial chunk of that belonged to the building society. Now, they would own second homes abroad and have investment income from their properties. Within months, a couple of years at the most, they would be really serious property owners worth many thousands of pounds and it would all be because of her.

  She smiled. Up yours, Lester Groat.

  *

  “How much?” Groat choked on his can of lager, coming unthinkably close to spilling some. “Have you totally taken leave of your senses, woman? We’re only a year into a twenty five year mortgage for five thousand pounds on this house, which, if you recall, we worked out that we could comfortably afford. Where and how the devil are we going to get another seventeen and a half grand from? Even if we were to mortgage this place to the hilt we couldn’t raise that much and with rates of interest as they are at the moment, we could never afford the repayments. No one would ever lend us that sort of money anyway.”

  “I just knew you’d be awkward about it.”

  Groat raised his eyes in supplication. “I’m being awkward? I think not. It’s you. You. You wanting the impossible.”

  “You pooh-poohed it without a second thought. You didn’t even pause to consider it, not properly. You can’t bear the thought of your wife making money, being clever, having more…” She shook her head, struggled to find the right, grown up words that would put him in his place, “having more business acumen than you.”

  “You know it’s not that. We’re a partnership. You earn money and I earn money. We put it in the same pot and we live on it. I’ve always said that it doesn’t matter who earns what, we both put as much in our respective ways into our marriage. We both contribute to our collective standard of living.”

  She rounded on him in spoiled schoolgirl fashion. “That’s easy for you to say, you’ve always earned more than me. For all your so called ‘new man’ philosophy, you couldn’t bear it if I earned a lot, you were the housekeeper and had to ask me if you could spend some money, could you? It’s lucky for you I’m not one of those soppy females who only wants to have babies. You might even have to change a nappy. Ever think of that?”

  Groat was lost. He supposed she was following some abstruse line of female reasoning, but how she’d arrived at changing nappies from borrowing money on an industrial scale, he couldn’t fathom. However, there was enough for him to cope with in life at the moment. He didn’t have the physical or mental capacity to be warring on another front.

  He sighed, “All right. Why don’t you look into it. Perhaps we could afford an apartment.” He stalled her to obtain some breathing space, “I’m not promising anything mind, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit of research.”

  Gloria smiled triumphantly.

  Round one to me. First battle won, now on to win the war.

  TWENTY NINE

  Ted studied his collection of crime reports, intelligence submissions, Police Gazette entries, newspaper cuttings and his own, now typed up notes. To date there had been at least fifteen brace and bit jobs, that was if you left out the disputed ‘first’ one that Dee was unsure of – and included the Harrogate job that resulted in Donald Skepper being murdered. The one that Superintendent Dolby would have him exclude because of that awful, final result.

  So far, there had been four each committed in the South Yorkshire police area and Greater Manchester, two in Lancashire, one each in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and two in West Yorkshire. Both professionally and instinctively he would not have wanted to rule anything out – or in – until there was more information to go on.

  At least Superintendent Dolby was good enough to grant him an interview. His attempt to speak to the head of the Lancashire Constabulary CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Joe Mounsey, fell at the first fence. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s letter of authority cut no ice over the phone and he could hardly justify a five hundred mile round trip to Preston just to show it to some oik. It would not have got him any further forward and pragmatically – pragmatism being one of Ted’s greatest strengths – it would not have gained him any worthwhile advantage, so – to use a police officer’s dry jargon – that also, was a negative result. Privately, Ted considered that the man really couldn’t be bothered to speak to a mere detective sergeant, about some piffling burglary, no matter what the possible positive outcome might be, or the likely consequences – however dire – if he did not. The fact really upset him, that another, far more senior police officer could be so parochial and short sighted.

  South Yorkshire weren’t in any way interested. They’d suffered just three burglaries back in 1971 and one in High Green, the previous January. Nothing since and no reason to talk to a D/S from the Met, with no jurisdiction and no information for them that was in any way likely to detect crimes that were not affecting their current clear-up rate, which was all right, thank you.

  On one level, Ted couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but on a detached, professional and cognitive level, completely understood. It didn’t sit any easier with him, nor did it help his cause, nor the fate of the next unfortunate that was likely to be the victim of this cold, calculating, callous burglar turned killer.

  Greater Manchester were similarly uninterested. The feeling that being a member of the Metropolitan Police was not assisting his cause grew on him. He wondered what it would take to get these people together and share information, if not resources, to defeat a common enemy.

  If he couldn’t obtain co-operation from police forces that had been hit two, three or four times, how much less could he expect anything positive from those that had only suffered a single offence? Dejected, he did not bother contacting Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, or Derbyshire. Pragmatism will out, so stoically, Ted set about producing a flyer to circulate to all forces. The information was already out there, just not drawn together in one place. Perhaps pointedly reinforcing the mayhem and murder being committed by this one man crime wave would make them sit up and take note. Somehow, on the form experienced to date, he doubted that it would.

  *

  Dr H Milne – notes of interview.

  So was there any one point in time, one particular incident, or spur that made you decide – as you put it – to go for the big one?

  Not at the time, no, but now you put it like that, I suppose it were that postmaster in Harrogate. What was that about? Why did he do that? I truly only ever had the weapons with me to keep the advantage, my superiority. I’m only a small bloke after all, like I said. If he hadn’t tried anything, nothing would have happened. Idiot. And there were other things as well, but I’d got as much, if not more from places where I’d managed to find the keys and get out without coming across anyone, or being seen. That woman’s a widow now and all for what? Twat.

  So what are you saying?

  I suppose that, what I mean is that I could get in to places and come away with £500, £1000 or more without anyone ever knowing I were in there. That bloke rushed me. Really tried to get me. The papers said he was a have a go hero. It wasn’t heroics at all, it did not make sense. He didn’t think about the situation he was in, he just came at me. What did he expect me to do? Anyway, I’d already sussed out a better way of getting far more money, with far less likelihood of anyone getting hurt. I only had to pull it off the once, and then I was set for life. Out of the water, out of the shit, onto dry land and into the sunshine.

  THIRTY

  Groat stood outside the DAC’s office. He wore the suit he usually reserved for Crown Court. He rehearsed his key words and phrases over and over again – Public interest, national security, political repercussions. Eventually, a
fter a bowel loosening wait, he was admitted into the inner sanctum.

  “Detective Sergeant Groat.”

  “Acting D/I at the moment, sir – but who’s counting?” He squirmed horribly, hardly able to believe he had actually uttered something so crass – to such a senior officer and worse, someone upon whom he needed to make a good impression. The one – he hoped – that would be able to help him out of his predicament.

  The DAC looked at him sharply. “Whatever. You’d better sit down. Now, what’s this all about?”

  Groat launched into his spiel. He précised the story about the raid on the Bawdy House and the subsequent house to house enquiries. He did not know what to expect from the big man, but he showed no emotion, reaction or indeed interest when he mentioned the address, so he watched him even closer as he reached the part about knocking on the door of 337.

  “A young woman called Olivia Di Angelo.”

  The DAC didn’t even blink. He was so cool, Groat couldn’t believe it. Surely the man could not be involved with Olivia and sit there totally without any outward sign, as his guilty secret was about to be laid open in front of him, potential ruin. Groat started to panic. Perhaps he’d got it wrong and was about to blurt out the whole convoluted tale to someone with no involvement and certainly no direct professional responsibility. He was counting on the DAC having a personal, vested interest. He needed someone with huge influence, sufficient authority and pulling power – and overwhelming reason – to help him out of this mess. Without that, he was ruined. His plan a non-starter. No way out. In the shit again, as always. It was only the depth that varied.

  Bollocks.

  The DAC said quietly, “Go on.”

  He couldn’t pull out now, simply stop. Whatever was going to happen, it was too late, he was already committed. He thought grimly, in for a penny… He cleared his throat and launched into his carefully rehearsed version of events. He recounted – relatively truthfully – the manner in which he first met Olivia. Then he was off, out on a limb, saying that she had given him information about goings on in the flats that made him interested in her – as a snout.