‘Come on, Dave – you been on Mars for the last five years?’ said someone. ‘You’ve got to remember Dave’s only twelve years old,’ said another, and the room sniggered.
‘Yeah, Dave, the robbery that was plastered across every newspaper in the country for a month,’ said Ojo.
‘Oh – that one. Course I’ve heard of it,’ said McGilligott with a wide grin, and then began to sing.
‘Who can rob at sunrise?
Sprinkle it with gold
Cover it in diamonds and a miracle or two?
The Handyman. The Handyman can . . .’
The room winced at his out-of-tune warbling, and Finn waited for the laughter to subside. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard this bastardisation of the old Sammy Davis Jr. classic. The crime remained unsolved and with each passing year it became more of an urban legend. It was up there with Brink’s-Mat and Hatton Garden now in its notoriety. Despite numerous arrests over the years, none of the major players had ever been caught. There still remained a debate whether they’d even been accurately identified. The investigating team were a laughing stock while the robbers were the subject of endless colourful speculation.
As the room quietened, Finn gave McGilligott a glare of sub-zero contempt.
‘I don’t want to hear that again. Not even as a joke. That goes for all of you – we’re not breathing life into that old fairy story.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Paulsen suddenly. ‘Who’s the Handyman?’
‘A myth,’ snapped Finn. ‘Supposedly some all-powerful underworld figure behind the Stansted heist, but he doesn’t exist. Current thinking is several well-established career criminals teamed up to do it. There’s a unit in Hertfordshire still dying on its arse trying to follow the money. You know how the papers like to spin this stuff – they want you to believe there’s a Michael Caine type leading a team of loveable old rogues. But it’s bollocks. There is no ‘‘Handyman’’ – probably just a bunch of ex-cons sipping sangria by the Med now.’
‘What’s this got to do with Kaul?’ asked Paulsen. Whether she was aware of it or not – and Finn’s money was on the latter – she was getting more of those side glances again.
‘Quite possibly, absolutely nothing. But did he come into contact with Whitlock that night? Is there a connection? Also the manner of Kaul’s death suggests the killer was no amateur. It’s more the sort of killing you’d associate with Whitlock’s mates. It’s an unlikely link, but let’s keep an open mind. It’s a line of inquiry, until it isn’t.’
‘Have we spoken to his old station?’ asked Ojo. Finn nodded.
‘Uniform put in a call earlier, and haven’t flagged anything up. Kaul’s wake is tomorrow and I’m going. If any of his old crew are there, I’ll reach out to them. In the meantime, Jacks, I want the names of everyone who was at the wedding – who we’ve spoken to, and who we haven’t.’
Ojo nodded, and Finn turned to a man in his late forties, another of the older officers who seemed less than impressed by Paulsen.
‘Let’s check where we are with the CCTV coverage and ANPR. There’s cameras in the hotel forecourt, and there’s some I spotted on the surrounding approach roads too. Uniform were rounding it up.’
He then turned to a young woman draining the last of an instant coffee from a heavily chipped mug.
‘Nishat – keep in touch with SOCO and the fire investigation team. See if anything else comes out, and I’d like to know more about that accelerant they found. Ring the pathologist as well, find out exactly what time the post-mortem’s been scheduled for.’
With that, Finn signalled the end of the briefing. The room started to disperse with quiet efficiency and Paulsen found herself alone.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked Finn.
‘Look into Kaul’s fire consultancy and see how well it was doing. Stephanie seemed to think it was pretty successful. Keep looking into his finances. If he paid for the whole wedding let’s find out how he managed it. It was a good spot earlier . . . now follow it up. See where it takes you.’
Paulsen nodded and headed off, glad to have a mission and a compliment. For a moment Finn took in the incident room; it was how he liked it. Everyone focused, everyone clear. He turned on his heels and left them to it.
‘The fucking Handyman? Do me a favour,’ said John Skegman, holding his head in his hands. ‘The link’s spurious to say the least, and the Pacific Square fire was five years ago. That’s a whole lot of time for Kaul to have made any number of enemies. You might as well blame Donald sodding Trump.’
Finn was standing in Skegman’s office. He’d never realised before how awkward the DCI sounded when he swore.
‘He was with the crew who found Erik Whitlock’s body. There were hundreds of firefighters there that night, but Kaul was one of the four who went in first.’
Skegman thought about it with the expression of a man with badly trapped wind.
‘It’s that Cambridge education of yours, Alex. Makes you overthink stuff,’ Skegman muttered. Finn rolled his eyes, and didn’t mind letting it show. Skegman hadn’t gone to university and was oddly prickly about the fact. It wasn’t the first time he’d made a crack like that and Finn doubted it would be the last. He suppressed his irritation and smiled politely instead.
‘I’m not proposing to put it at the centre of the investigation. I’m just flagging up the link, however tenuous.’
‘The Stansted heist is a Pandora’s box – ask any senior officer in the country. You’re talking five years of taxpayers’ money that’s been chucked away by Chapel Row.’
Chapel Row was the station in Hertfordshire where the unit charged with investigating the robbery was based. Their lack of progress was a standing joke within the police service. It was a smaller team these days than at the outset, in line with their reduced funding, but it would remain operational. The investigation was too high-profile to simply be forgotten. The general feeling was they’d missed their moment and the trail was, if not cold, then certainly lukewarm.
‘Look, I don’t believe in him either, but there’ve been a number of deaths,’ persisted Finn. ‘On the periphery. People who knew people connected to suspects. The suggestion’s always been it was the so-called Handyman tying up loose ends. It’s how he earnt his name after all.’
That much was true. The first victim attributed to him was stabbed through the eye with a screwdriver, while the second was battered to death with a claw hammer. It was the tabloids who’d come up with the name because he seemed to be working his way through the toolbox.
‘Someone was behind Stansted,’ continued Finn. ‘And they were good – it was well planned and well executed. Whoever was responsible was a pro, and I’m happy to call him the Handyman or the Bogeyman or whatever you want. The manner of Adesh Kaul’s death, the fact there’s a loose connection to Erik Whitlock . . . don’t we have to look into it? If for no other reason than to rule it out?’
Skegman thought about it for a moment and then sighed.
‘Alright, talk to Chapel Row. See what their take is on it. The sooner we can move on from it, the happier I’ll be. How’s Paulsen getting on, by the way?’
Finn considered his answer, and Skegman smiled.
‘Yes, she does rather have that effect.’
‘There’s definite signs of potential, but I’m not sure she’s going out of her way to make friends. It’s an interesting approach on your first day.’
‘Why don’t you send her up to Hertfordshire? Someone who can get under their skins might not be the worst thing. I imagine it’ll be the most excitement they’ve had in ages.’
If Skegman was expecting a smile in response it didn’t come. The pause made him look up and search out Finn’s face.
‘And what about you? How are you bearing up?’ There was warmth to his tone but a steel behind the eyes.
‘I’m fine, sir. It’s good to be back. Honest.’
He met Skegman’s gaze, then turned briskly and walked
towards the door without waiting for a reply.
‘Liar,’ said Karin.
Chapter 12
The village was as English as an English village could be. There was a green, a small row of shops and even a working red telephone box next to the war memorial. It possessed one small pub which was packed every night. You could call it sleepy, but those who lived there would proudly tell you otherwise.
In one of the small houses a street or two behind the green, an alarm clock rang. A slightly built man in his late fifties with greying hair swung his legs out of bed, picked up his glasses from the bedside table and rose.
The sober tones of the Today programme on Radio Four chattered in the background, as he washed and groomed. He used an old-fashioned shaving brush, with shaving cream delivered directly from his favourite barber in Mayfair. He Brylcreemed his hair, ensuring not a single strand was left untouched. His neatly ironed and pressed clothes were laid out where he’d left them the night before – a crisp white shirt with silver cufflinks, a pin-striped waistcoat, dark corduroy trousers and immaculately polished black leather shoes. As always after dressing, he flicked open the gold pocket watch laid next to the clothes, listened to the mechanism ticking in perfect harmony and fastened it to his waistcoat.
Breakfast consisted of a grapefruit and two slices of heavily buttered thick brown toast, slathered liberally with strong English marmalade. He drank tea from the pot; a milky Assam which he sugared the way his mother used to, taking a small silver spoon and holding it just beneath the surface, circling it around the cup to enable the maximum infusion of flavour.
A copy of The Times was delivered every morning, and after breakfast he allowed himself the luxury of forty-five minutes before work to read through it properly. In his view it didn’t just pay to be abreast, it was critical. Scrutinising the front page, he tutted to himself as he read the Governor of the Bank of England’s latest fiscal predictions. There’d likely be a general election before the end of the year, he mused. Another headline caught his attention:
‘Blaze kills groom at own wedding’.
As he read through the article, one line in particular stood out:
‘Kaul was one of the first firefighters to attend the blaze at One Pacific Square, and resigned from the fire service not long afterwards.’
He read the article for a second time to be sure he’d assimilated all the information correctly, then carefully closed the newspaper and ran his tongue across his lower lip. It was probably nothing, but he was not a man who liked loose ends, however insignificant. He strode into the living room where there was a large mahogany desk at the far end.
The sun was shining through the windows and it looked like it was going to be a glorious day. He took a set of keys from his pocket, and unlocked a small drawer at the side of the desk. Inside were at least seven different mobile phones piled on top of each other. Selecting the one he wanted, he turned it on and tapped out a text.
We need to talk – call me.
He peered out of the window and nodded to himself approvingly; it was indeed shaping up to be a beautiful morning.
Chapter 13
Paulsen took the train to Hertfordshire, stopping briefly to grab a sandwich at Liverpool Street station. She’d resisted the urge to call Nancy for a whinge while she wolfed it down. She was sure she was being sent on the schlepp simply because she was the new girl. She’d seen some of the dinosaurs sizing her up in the incident room and wondered if they were now enjoying a laugh at her expense. They were different with Ojo she’d noticed, but then she was a detective sergeant. New station, same old nonsense.
Finn was adamant a phone call wouldn’t suffice – she needed to see the evidence Chapel Row possessed in person. So a day which began in deepest south London was now taking her to the Essex–Herts borders. The police station was based in the bowels of an industrial estate just outside Bishop’s Stortford. Before setting off she’d spoken on the phone to a DI Andy Warrender, the man currently charged with leading the investigation into the Stansted robbery. He’d been courteous, but she detected an underlying suspicion after she’d explained her reasons for calling. In person, Warrender was in his mid-forties, with straight blond hair and jowly pink features. He’d made her a cup of tea in a messy kitchen area, before leading her through to a narrow corridor of small offices where his team were based. They were one floor up from the station’s main CID, but she sensed the divide from the rest of the place immediately. They might as well be in Scotland.
‘Explain to me again why you think there’s a connection with your homicide? Suspected homicide,’ Warrender corrected himself sharply. Paulsen explained Adesh Kaul was one of the first responders at Pacific Square and Warrender nodded.
‘Erik Whitlock is a man we’ve thoroughly investigated, of course. You think your man might have crossed paths with him that night?’
‘It’s one line of inquiry. We’re trying to track down some of the fire crew on the same watch who were with him. My governor sent me up here for thoroughness’ sake, I think. To help us rule out the connection.’
‘So you’ve got a man who might have crossed paths with Whitlock on the night of the fire, then five years later gets burnt to death at his own wedding . . .’ He weighed it up. ‘I can see why you might want to ask the question at least. What do you want to know?’
‘Tell me about the Handyman for a start?’
Given the way Finn described the man – part urban legend, part tabloid invention – she wasn’t sure what kind of reaction to expect. But Warrender nodded, as if he’d been half-expecting it.
‘It depends on who you believe he is. What you read in the papers tends to be a mix of the truth, bad journalism and out-and-out bollocks. The fact is, there’s several people who fit the bill. We’ve ruled most of them out for one reason or another and narrowed it down to one man. If you want to call him the Handyman, knock yourself out.’
‘And who’s that?’
‘Patience. I’ll come to that, but first we need to go back to the beginning. Let me take you through what happened on the day.’
He took her over to a wall in the main office, whose entire breadth seemed to have been given over to a pictorial reconstruction.
‘A security guard and a driver were transporting cash belonging to a Swiss bank from a cargo depot at Stansted Airport to a British bank in central London. Armed men intercepted the van on an A road only a few miles into their journey. The sacks of cash were transferred into a red Subaru, while the van’s guard and driver were tied up and dumped out of the way.’ As he spoke he pointed at blurry CCTV images of the Subaru, and a patch of scrubland where the two luckless men were left.
‘The robbers did their homework. They knew exactly where the most vulnerable part of the route was. They were able to wait in nearby woodland, while a motorcycle rider trailed the van ready to give the signal. They also knew the names of the guard and driver’s wives and children. They knew which care home the driver’s mother was living in, and they knew what colour outfit the guard’s wife was wearing when she dropped off her three-year-old at nursery school that morning.’
Warrender ushered her over to another wall, and Paulsen couldn’t shake the feeling it was like being in a museum. It felt as if she was being shown carefully preserved exhibits rather than the kind of live investigation she’d seen in the incident room at Cedar House earlier.
‘The burnt-out wreckage of the Subaru was found in a side street in Ipswich two days later. The stolen motorbike we found in a car park in St Albans.’
‘What do you think happened to the money then?’ asked Paulsen.
‘Well, I’m as convinced as I can be that Erik Whitlock dealt with that. He was an experienced money launderer – almost the go-to guy in the UK at the time for a job of that magnitude.’
‘But the money disappeared?’ asked Paulsen.
‘Yes. The key question has always been whether Whitlock managed to launder it before he died, or whether his death fo
rced the robbers into doing something else. If he did manage to take care of it, then my strong suspicion is most of the cash is no longer in the country. If he didn’t, then it’s likely still here in some form.’ Warrender crossed his arms.
He looked and sounded defensive, Paulsen thought, and she remembered Finn’s words from the briefing. This investigating team was one of the most derided in the country. She felt a sudden sympathy for Warrender. It was easy to mock from a distance. As if reading her mind, he smiled unexpectedly.
‘We’re following leads in both directions, here and abroad. Which all brings us back to your first question about the Handyman.’
He ushered her to a corner of the wall in front of them, and pointed at a small black-and-white photograph of a man. He looked like an old-fashioned tailor. The face was heavily lined, with Brylcreemed grey hair.
‘I’ve got good reason to suspect this is the man in question. His name is Raymond Spinney. He’s a career criminal who started out as a pickpocket, graduated to house burglaries, then finally on to armed robberies. He was behind a series of raids over a three-year period on post offices in Holloway, Clapham, Leyton and Ealing.’ Warrender waited a moment as Paulsen worked it out.
‘North, south, east and west London?’
‘Exactly. One after the other – never in person. But the gang members we’ve managed to nick over the years have built an interesting picture. Spinney planned the raids with expert precision. Every eventuality was thought through. Who was likely to be inside, how fast it would take an armed response team to get there, all of it. Nothing was left to chance.’
‘And you believe he’s behind the Stansted robbery because of his previous MO? That it fits?’
‘In part. I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to think he got bored of robbing post offices and wanted a crack at something bigger. The facts support it too – those post office raids came to a halt just months before the Stansted heist. I can also directly connect Spinney to Erik Whitlock: Whitlock was the man who laundered the proceeds of the post office jobs.’
The Burning Men Page 6