by G. F. Newman
‘If you were,’ Pyle said, ‘you’ve got no problem, Mark. We’ll see.’ He was doubtful as he stepped out of the room.
Embarrassment over what had happened on their manor made both the resident di and duty sergeant amenable to any suggestion by Pyle that might help them out of their predicament. He exploited their unease.
‘How come your two lads happened to be down at the Gas Board?’ he asked in the di’s office. ‘D’you hear a whisper?’
‘I wish to fuck I had. I’d’ve had more than a couple of dcs waiting down there. They were collecting a new stove for my missus. The fucking gas company didn’t know when they could deliver it – is she giving me ache about the fucking damage that got done to it! I’ll probably have to go and buy her another one.’
With a collusive smile Pyle said, ‘So your lads didn’t book on the air? No one knew they were there?’
‘No, I told them to keep quiet,’ Kenley explained.
Pyle nodded. ‘What they like? Half-wide?’
‘They’re all right, Fred. They do what they’re told.’
‘Their diaries haven’t gone upstairs yet, have they?’ They hadn’t. ‘Good. Well, maybe they ought to put down that they were out there on obo – gets you out of trouble,’ he offered, like a helpful colleague. However, it wasn’t that simple, nothing ever was with him. Anticipating the blank they might draw with Mark Johnson, he was already thinking about another candidate to take his place. As such a move would be swift, it would be useful to have the local di owing a favour, one that could be called in at short notice. He doubted he would need any help with his plans for Jack Lynn.
Kenley said, ‘The commander is screaming like a bastard – the blaggers getting away like they did caused a right upset, and no mistake. He’d have put the duty inspector back in uniform if he wasn’t already in fucking uniform!’
‘Well, it was all down to the wallies.’
‘Why was the Criminal Intelligence lad there with the video camera? How’d that come about?’
‘They got a whisper. Nothing positive. Covered it with one man.’
‘How you explaining your two lads being at the scene?’ Pyle wanted to know. ‘That’ll be a disciplinary matter, if it were to get out about them collecting that stove for your missus.’
Kenley thought about this and nodded. ‘Yeah. Maybe I’d better have them stick down they were on obo.’
‘About right. The commander will forget this fuckup now we’ve nicked the blaggers.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘You don’t fancy going back in uniform, Frank?’
‘Not even to take promotion,’ Kenley said, as though it were a real prospect.
‘How are our witnesses looking?’ Pyle asked in a peremptory manner. It was his case now, and reference to the local man was a courtesy.
‘Oh, we’ve more than enough of those.’
‘Not policemen, are they?’ He had seen too many cases go to court where the only witnesses were policemen and where the villains got chucked as a result.
‘Some are – a lot of civilians.’
‘Get some id parades organised. They’ll probably get us further at this stage than interrogating this motley fucking crew.’
Identity parades were supposed to be formal and conducted by the uniform branch. However, Pyle knew how to exploit witnesses’ natural prejudices – by appealing to the basic, emotional right wing leaning he figured the majority of the population had. This tendency was nothing to do with politics other than that their politics followed their emotions. Despite their faults, which sometimes surfaced in public, he knew the police were seen by most as the only means of maintaining the rule of law, as a last resort – to protect the public from the marauding hordes. No one was going to rock the boat so hard that it sank, whatever their politics. Because of the recent ruling concerning the validity of identification evidence, if unsupported by other evidence, care was taken so that id parades were seen to be fair. Left to their own devices, Pyle accepted that most witnesses were worse than useless. He would leave none to their own devices.
Having conducted a pre-interview himself in the company of the arresting officers, Pyle decided the suspects were all involved, so he objected to letting them speak to their solicitors, or anyone else. His biggest problem was having to put them up in court within thirty-six hours or release them under the PACE rules. Thirty-six hours wasn’t long enough to get these men convicted. None of them would put his hand up.
Tully and Coleman, being similar in appearance, were put in a parade together with ten other men. The minimum number required for two suspects going up. Isaacs went in among seven other men. The fourth, Mark Johnson, wasn’t put up. Two nurses and a doctor at the hospital verified he was at his mother’s deathbed and the time was noted for the death certificate.
Witnesses came in in chronological order, as they would appear in court. Some weren’t available at this sort of notice so would have to attend another parade, others Pyle wouldn’t use on realising they had seen little, if anything, or were so confused they would be more help to the blaggers in securing their release. The whole process was tedious and time-consuming, and a lot of patience was required by the witnesses, the police and the members of the public in the line-up. The feelings of suspects weren’t considered.
The woman who locked the front door of the Gas Board offices was the first in. She was taken along the line by a uniform.
‘What I want you to do,’ the inspector said, ‘is see if you can pick out any of the men you saw at the robbery. Just take your time, Miss, we have all day. And please don’t be afraid.’ There was a bored familiarity to his words.
The parade was held in the muster room. Pyle would have preferred the parade to be held in light similar to that at the time of the robbery, but it was too cold to be standing around outside today.
Walking straight past Coleman, who was in second place, the woman hesitated at Tully, who was next to him, then went on to the fourth man, and studied him. Pyle held his breath as he watched until she came back to Tully and indicated him. She didn’t seem quite certain. She would be by the time they got to court, Pyle decided.
The next witness was one of the security guards, the less injured of the two. His colleague was too ill to attend. Special parades would be held for him at a later date. He picked out Tully. ‘That’s one of the buggers,’ he said, ‘I’m sure of it.’ He drew a blank on Coleman, and on Isaacs when he was paraded. Other witnesses from the Gas Board picked out Tully, some even picked out Coleman. Pyle knew it would be a stretch using them, as he was convinced that Coleman would have been left outside to drive the car. His antecedents bore this out.
The confusion apparent in the civilians was absent from the police witnesses, which gave Fred Pyle a sense of foreboding, notwithstanding the fact that they were trained in observation. They had opportunity and motive to corroborate their evidence, to study the video and look at the photographs of the villains in the police files. They would be challenged on all that in court, and soon it would be made to look swift, even though he knew at that point it wasn’t.
‘How does it look, Fred?’ dci Simmons asked when he got back to the Yard later that day. Simmons was at his desk checking through another large report line by line with a ruler. ‘Get some good ids?’
‘From policemen is all!’ Pyle said. ‘Twenty-seven witnesses, and only twelve what I’d call positive. All of them from policemen.’ Policemen were sometimes credible, but he was being practical.
‘Might be a problem in court, Fred.’
‘There are a few more to see yet. Some of them might shape up all right,’ he said on a more optimistic note. ‘They saw them all right. Like most of us they get a mental block when asked to walk down that line.’
‘Can we make sure of them, Fred?’
He gave Simmons a look and waited.
‘They get
some flash brief looking to make a name for himself – he digs up something on a policeman or two. Won’t look too clever, will it? In fact it’ll start to look swift.’
Pyle laughed. ‘Some fucking chance, I should think.’
‘In the old days,’ Simmons went on, ‘it only needed a policeman to go into the witness box and say he did it, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind. Not the case anymore.’
‘This little firm did that blagging all right.’
‘I believe it, Fred. We’ll need something more than coppers to make sure. Either some good forensic to go with those ids, or something more definite from the civilian witnesses.’
‘Be handy,’ he agreed, ‘wouldn’t it just?’
In the corner of the dis’ office there was a tv and video with the tape that dc Hill made. It had been run forwards and backwards through the machine a hundred times, and would be hundreds of times more. Every frame was frozen and studied. Pyle pressed the switch and moved from one blurred image to the next. Then it hit him who he was looking at.
‘You know who the fella in the flying helmet is, don’t you?’ he said. ‘The one who’s missing?’
ds Lethridge, who was with him, sat forward at the desk, leaning his weight on his forearms.
‘It’s Jack Lynn. That’s who it is.’
Without commenting, Lethridge took the remote control and flicked back and forth over the frames. The face of the person in the picture was obscured beyond recognition by the straps of the flying helmet.
‘It’s a bit of a stretch, guv.’
‘Look at him. It’s his build, the way he walks.’
After a moment Lethridge said, ‘Yes, I suppose that could be him.’
‘Could be? Of course it is!’ Taking the remote back, he studied more frozen frames. ‘That’s Lynn, Eric. No doubt about it. We’ll give him a pull, turn his place over.’
Lethridge stood up from the desk. ‘We going armed?’
‘Might be an idea to take the firearms unit. What we want out at his place is something Forensic could use. A few hairs from his hairbrush, so they can match any in the flying helmet. He rose, switching off the tv. ‘He’ll go this time, I’ll make sure of that.’ He meant it.
31
JACK LYNN SLEPT THE SLEEP of the innocent. Nothing woke him before time, apart from someone coming into the room. If the children cried out in the night it was his wife who got up to them. The front and back doors of his house being kicked in at six o’clock on the cold December morning was enough to awaken him, and the dead!
Both he and Dolly were alert before detectives crashed open the bedroom door and switched on the light.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Lynn demanded, flinging the duvet back.
‘Don’t move, Jack,’ Pyle ordered:
‘Jack!’ Dolly said in alarm.
Ignoring the words and the three guns pointing at him, Lynn slid out of bed. One of the girls in the next room had woken and was crying and calling for her Dad.
‘They’ve woken up Sandra now,’ Dolly was saying.
Lynn could hear how confused and upset his wife was.
‘Stay where you are, Jack,’ Pyle said, ‘or we’ll shoot you –’
‘M’daughter’s crying. You’re out of order coming here, upsetting people like this…’
‘Let your wife go to her.’
Dolly looked at her husband. ‘What do they want, Jack?’ she asked, getting out of bed.
She was wearing a flimsy nightdress and Lynn resented more than anything the policemen staring at her. ‘D’you have to come here like this?’
‘You’re a dangerous villain, Jack. We had to make certain.’
‘You rotten bastards!’ Dolly’s words were angry. ‘I can’t help but call you it. He ain’t done nothing. Tell them, Jack.’
‘Go and see to Sandra, Doll. Go on,’ he urged. He knew his wife meant well, but her slagging off the filth wasn’t helping the situation.
Dolly started out of the bedroom, but it was clear she couldn’t help herself. She turned back and launched herself at the detective. ‘You filthy bastard! You’re filth, that’s all.’
‘Do like you’re told,’ Pyle said, defending himself. Other detectives aided him. Two others came up the stairs and crowded onto the landing.
‘Leave it out, Dolly – c’mon, s’just a pull. I ain’t been at it.’
Calming a little, she went to the children.
‘D’you want to put on some clothes?’ Pyle said. ‘Or are they your going-away clothes?’
Lynn was in his vest and pants.
‘Couldn’t this have waited until tomorrow?’ he asked, stepping into his trousers. ‘I mean, coming here at this time of the night, worrying the life outta m’ family.’
‘This is tomorrow… make a start downstairs, Eric, will you?’ Pyle turned to another detective. ‘Have a go up here. Do a thorough job.’
‘I tell you, I ain’t been at it at all,’ Lynn protested. ‘That’s straight.’
‘I didn’t expect you to put your hands up, Jack.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t you? You will soon enough, if we charge you.’
‘Leave off, will you? I ain’t done nothing.’ He paused in dressing and looked at the di, as if trying to fathom what was going on behind those expressionless eyes. ‘I think I’d better call my brief, hadn’t I?’
The detective shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
The other two detectives who had entered the bedroom with him were searching, one was going through the wardrobe, all the pockets, folds and linings of, the other being just as methodical with the dressing table.
‘Someone just stuck my name up, didn’t they?’ Lynn said. ‘That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? That fucking grass you got working for you…’ He wanted to believe this was a routine tug, one he would pull clear of with ease, but it was too heavy for that. They seemed to have something definite in mind. Whatever that was their finding the fifteen hundred pounds in the envelope taped to the bottom of a dressing table drawer helped convince them. He looked at the detective, who smiled at the find.
‘A good start, Jack,’ Pyle said.
‘S’only a bit of dough I keep by me. Rainy-days money. What does it prove?’
‘That you had it off the other day. How much here?’
Lynn told him, and added, ‘S’mine, innit?’ It wasn’t the proceeds of a recent robbery.
‘You’ll get a receipt for it. And for anything else we find.’
Lynn ran a comb through his hair – a nervous habit. He was nervous now and trying not to show it.
‘You look very nice, Jack. You fit?’
‘Ain’t you gonna let me see my kids first?’ he appealed.
‘’Course. But try legging it and we’ll shoot you.’
Lynn knew the detective meant it.
‘Go with him, Rog’,’ Pyle told the dc.
As Lynn started out he glanced back and saw Pyle turn to the dressing table and pick up the comb. With more pressing matters on his mind he didn’t think any more about what the di’s interest in his comb might be.
‘What’s it all about, Jack?’ Dolly asked as he stooped over the bed in Sandra’s room.
‘You’re going with them men, Dad?’ asked Carol.
‘In a little while, love,’ he said, wishing he could do more to reassure his eldest daughter. ‘It’s just a pull, Dolly, s’all.’
‘Why can’t they leave you alone? Rotten sods.’
‘They don’t know how to, do they?’
‘I don’t want you to go, Dad.’ Sandra was in tears.
‘I’ll be back in time to take you to school, you see.’
‘Shall I call a brief or someone?’ Dolly asked.
‘Might be an ide
a. See how it goes.’
‘Where they taking you?’
‘I dunno.’ He looked at the detective.
‘Abbey Wood, I expect,’ the dc said.
‘Abbey Wood?’ Both Lynn and his wife repeated the name like it was some hitherto untrodden territory.
‘We’re not going anywhere yet, Jack,’ Pyle said, appearing in the doorway. ‘Let’s get started. We’ve got a lot to get through.’
#
Searching Lynn’s house from top to bottom was the starting point for Pyle’s squad. Making a job of it took hours. Lynn was kept there while they searched, in his presence in some rooms, in the presence of his wife in others. Things taken out were put back rather than strewn around as in the past. Some angry memos came flying down from the dac after complaints about that. It was less out of concern for suspects’ property than the fact that things strewn around needed to be moved again as the search progressed and sometimes evidence was lost. Here things were taken down, searched and put back. Nothing much of interest: no guns, or further caches of money. There were some interesting receipts in the mountain of paper which Lethridge and dc Fenton sifted through, the most interesting items Lynn denied knowledge of.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Lynn commented whenever they sought an explanation, ‘there ain’t nothing here.’
‘We got time to waste,’ Pyle replied. He was beginning to believe him.
‘There’s another one of those for that garage,’ ds Lethridge said as he came through to the living room. ‘That’s five we found.’
‘What about this garage, Jack?’
Right then Lynn looked like a man who knew he was in trouble. ‘Don’t know anything about it, do I?’ he tried.
‘No. I guess that’s why you got it in a bent name. I don’t suppose you have the key either?’ The blagger simply offered them a hostile stare. ‘Makes no difference. Get over there, Eric. Take a look. We’ll be down the nick. You want to get your coat, Jack? Those cells get a bit cold.’
At the prospect of her husband being taken away, Mrs Lynn was unable to contain herself – not that she had been exactly amenable since they burst into her house three hours before. In the narrow entrance hall, which suddenly seemed very crowded with departing policemen, she launched her attack. ‘You fucking bastards,’ she screamed, startling the detectives. ‘He’s not going anywhere, you filthy bastards – that’s all you are filth. You bastards, I hope you rot; I hope you get cancer.’