Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1)

by Ian Mayfield

  ‘Yes, Kim?’

  ‘I’m just wondering about the way this is going,’ Kim said. ‘I mean we started off investigating the arson, right, but that seems to’ve gone by the wayside.’ She stopped. Sophia’s blue eyes were fixed on her, and suddenly what she’d been bursting to say didn’t seem so urgent.

  ‘What do you mean, by the wayside?’ Sophia said.

  ‘We’re just like focusing totally on Debbie now,’ Kim burst out. ‘I mean there’s the photo and that, yeah, but we don’t even know for sure she’s dead, never mind whether she’s been murdered.’

  Sophia sat and said nothing in an eloquent way. Kim braced herself for the lecture about the unexpected turns major enquiries often took, how a detective should never lose touch of the issue that most concerns her: the eventual apprehension of a suspect, based on the meticulous assembling of evidence.

  But all Sophia said was, ‘Are you concerned because the Bentons are black and Debbie Clarke’s white?’

  Kim didn’t even have to nod.

  ‘Rest assured,’ Sophia said in an expressionless voice, ‘I haven’t forgotten the Bentons. How could I? I saw them when the paramedics brought them out.’

  Kim chewed her lip.

  ‘In fact,’ the DCI went on, ‘there’s a new witness.’ She clicked her mouse and pulled up an email. ‘Walked into Lewisham nick on Friday and made a complaint of harassment. Someone tried to warn her off talking to us. Could be nothing, except that the complainant happens to be Mark Watkins’s cousin. Go and see what she has to say. Take Marie with you.’

  An angry Helen Wallace had drawn Zoltan Schneider’s attention with a loud thump to the overnight crime reports. It didn’t take him long to understand why she was exasperated, and to share her feelings. Either Croydon had gone insane over the weekend, or the crime desk had. There were things here which were emphatically not Special Crime property. Friday night had seen a spate of burglaries at a sheltered housing scheme, all but one of the flats ransacked while their occupants were on an outing to Billy Elliot. The following afternoon a steaming gang had gone on the rampage down South Norwood High Street, leaving a number of cuts, bruises and empty tills in their wake. During a ram raid in the early hours of Sunday morning on a DIY superstore on the Purley Way, a security guard had been tied up and locked in a cupboard with a fire hose for company. All serious crimes, of course, but regular CID’s to worry about. In tones that teetered on the edge of a shriek Helen next waved under his nose an attempted rape in Merton, which wasn’t even on their ground, for the love of Mike, and goodness alone knew how that had got in there. Added to which was their legitimate quota of two violent attacks on gay men, threatening phone calls to a local imam and the attempted abduction of a teenage girl outside a nightclub.

  For all of these last, Zoltan and Helen would have to find the manpower. Trouble was, the manpower seemed to be either absent or otherwise occupied. The balloon had gone up in a major way on the arson enquiry, which no doubt meant more bodies doing other things. Brian Hunt was still off, not due back until next week. Anne was in court, giving evidence in the case of a stabbing at a bail hostel. Across the room Jeff and Lucky were alternately screwing receivers to their ears and bouncing the results of their calls off each other. Possibly he could prise one of them away. If not, it left himself, Helen and Sandra Jones, all of whom had plenty to keep them busy already. Or should have. He could see Sandra raiding the stationery drawer, a ream of A4 in one hand, chatting to Lucky over her shoulder. Zoltan saw light. Excusing himself to Helen, he advanced purposefully towards her.

  Sandra said, ‘You coming Saturday, then?’

  ‘DC White’s leaving do?’ Lucky said, grateful for a few moments’ respite. ‘Am I invited? I mean I don’t even know her.’

  ‘Course you are.’

  ‘We’ve hardly said two words to each other.’

  ‘Listen, if Sandra says you’re invited, you’re invited,’ Jeff grinned, on hold with the phone hooked over his shoulder. ‘Anne doesn’t have much say in it.’

  Sandra ignored him. ‘You’re team,’ she told Lucky. ‘All the invite you need.’

  Lucky looked unhappy about it. ‘Have to see. Could I bring somebody?’

  ‘A date? More the merrier.’

  ‘No, not – ’

  ‘Did we say Barkeley’s in the end?’ Jeff said.

  Sandra turned to him. ‘Weren’t you there?’

  ‘Happen.’

  ‘Well, where did you vote for?’

  ‘It was a tie,’ Jeff said, ‘I thought.’

  ‘Eyes down,’ Sandra said warningly. Jeff’s caller came back on and he lifted the phone to his ear. With practised swiftness, Sandra pushed the drawer shut, turned on her heel and sat at her desk, promptly engrossed in the report she was typing. Zoltan wasn’t fooled. Smiling at Lucky, who sat transfixed, he stood over her and opened his mouth.

  ‘Don’t you just love British justice?’ a familiar voice said from the doorway.

  With an eloquent sag of his shoulders, he headed back across to where Anne White had just entered the room.

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Judge threw it out,’ Anne said. Tersely, she told him what had happened. Weeks of careful preparation just to get the CPS to take the case to Crown Court. Then at the last minute the young victim, who’d been persuaded at length by Anne to testify against his attacker on the promise of an almost certain conviction should he do so, had changed his mind. Anne knew, and the prosecutor knew, he’d been got at, maybe by threats, maybe by the lure of cash or drugs. But beyond a vain plea for the lad to think about what he was going to have to live with, there was little they could do. The accused had stepped down from the dock with a smirk.

  An old, old story. But one Special Crime was supposed to be designing out.

  ‘We can feel his collar again when the time comes,’ Zoltan said.

  ‘Be too late for some poor sod,’ Anne sighed. ‘Oh, well, I’ll be long gone. All I’ve got to worry about now is how to kill time for the rest of the week.’

  Zoltan gazed across the office to the three other detectives. Sandra was now genuinely busy, also with a phone call.

  ‘Now you mention it,’ he said brightly.

  The address was in New Cross, a house in a twenty-year-old estate off Cold Blow Lane that had been built on the site of the old Millwall football ground. A few hundred yards distant, the blue and white stands of the New Den could be seen over railway embankments. Marie parked outside a tiny red brick semi with a neat triangle of front lawn. The house had burnt timber door and window frames, to which someone had begun applying a coat of black paint. A small handwritten notice pinned beside the front door said: BELL OUT OF ORDER - PLEASE KNOCK. Seeing no knocker, Marie rattled the letterbox as loudly as she could. Presently a figure appeared through the frosted glass and opened the door.

  They’d been lucky to get hold of Grace Carmichael so promptly. She worked for a publishing firm and had been in an editorial meeting from which, to judge by the white blouse, black skirt and tights she still wore, she’d only just returned. As they introduced themselves she looked at her watch and ushered them inside. They were led into a small living room with a blue three-seater couch, a wicker papasan chair, a pine wall unit from Ikea with an iPod dock on it and no other furniture. A huge cheeseplant had colonised one corner. Drapes, cushions and beanbags in a spectrum of colours softened the bareness of the room. There was a faint but fresh smell of cannabis by which Grace Carmichael seemed wholly unperturbed. Catching the slight wrinkle of Marie’s nose, and her quick smile, Kim decided they oughtn’t to be, either.

  Their host was in her mid-twenties, breezy, businesslike and slightly bossy. She was of a similar height and build to Kim, whose skin was a shade lighter. Her hair was styled in an expensive bob, complemented by bright red lipstick and long, beaten gold earrings. Her gaze swept constantly about the room. She said, ‘Will this take long? Only I’m expecting my partner home in half an hour.’


  There was a framed photo on the wall unit, Grace Carmichael with a clean-cut looking white man of about the same age. Both wore evening wear and broad smiles. It looked as if it had been taken at a high-end Christmas party.

  ‘He doesn’t know we were coming?’ Marie said.

  ‘Get you a coffee or something?’ Miss Carmichael enquired distractedly, peering this way and that in search of something she’d lost. Kim and Marie both declined the offer, judging shrewdly that it was never likely to materialise. ‘He doesn’t even know I went to the police, as a matter of fact. Don’t want to worry him. He gets a bit steamed up about this sort of thing.’

  ‘About your cousin?’ Kim said.

  ‘Funny thing, he never knew Mark.’ Grace Carmichael plonked herself down in the papasan and rifled through some papers she’d extracted from a black leather briefcase. ‘The campaign needed a lawyer and he said he’d do it. That’s how I met him. Don’t mind me,’ she added as an afterthought, waving the papers about.

  Kim nodded, thinking that if they were going to oblige and get this done inside half an hour they’d better get cracking. ‘We’re here to talk to you about last Friday,’ she began. ‘The guy who threatened you.’

  ‘What d’you need to know?’ Miss Carmichael frowned at something she’d found among the papers, flipped the sheet over to see if it got better on the other side, evidently found that it didn’t, and put it back.

  ‘Well,’ Kim tried, ‘where did this happen and when?’

  ‘I said, you know. To the detective at Lewisham.’

  ‘We realise that, but this is part of a wider investigation now.’ Kim, as she said this, felt it sounded limp.

  ‘No problem,’ Miss Carmichael smiled, making brief eye contact. ‘Just trying to save a bit of time.’

  Marie came to Kim’s aid. ‘As my colleague explained on the phone, it’s possible this incident might’ve had something to do with the arson at the Bentons’.’

  ‘It had something to do with it all right.’ Miss Carmichael rose and began rummaging through a pile of magazines and other paper on the wall unit. ‘Didn’t I say?’

  Behind her back, Kim and Marie exchanged looks. Why did helpful people always turn out to be such rotten witnesses? From their impressions of her so far, Grace Carmichael’s unpleasant experience might well be a nine-tenths forgotten thing already. She was the sort of person, Kim reflected, who left her past breathless in her wake.

  ‘Start from the beginning,’ she suggested. ‘What happened exactly?’

  ‘This bloke came up to me in the street,’ Miss Carmichael said, leaving them suspended. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed triumphantly and, to their disbelief, turned from the wall unit clutching a black Mont Blanc fountain pen. She sat back down in the papasan and did absolutely nothing with it.

  ‘What street?’ Kim said. ‘When?’

  ‘Ladywell Road, eleven o’clock Friday morning.’ She seemed to devote her full attention to the interview for the first time. ‘Broad daylight, busy road. I even had Diane with me - my sister. She’s getting married next month and we’d been to the bridal salon for a fitting. Suddenly there’s this big bloke next to me, sort of matching pace with us. I’m trying to take no notice and then he flashes this knife. He had it like backwards up his sleeve; I could just see the handle and a bit of the blade. He mutters in my ear, “Don’t talk to the cops about the Bentons or you’ll end up like them”.’

  ‘Those were his exact words?’

  ‘Exactly. Then he dodged off over the road. This all took probably less than ten seconds. Diane was so excited, rabbiting on about her dress, she never even knew he was there. She was like, “What guy?”’ Miss Carmichael made a perplexed face. ‘Over in a flash. Just as well really. We were meeting my partner for lunch right after. In fact it turned out he was just across the street when it happened. Like I said, I don’t like to bother him with this kind of stuff.’

  ‘So,’ Kim asked, ‘why d’you think this bloke picked on you?’

  ‘No idea. I mean, it’s not like I’m the only living member of Justice for Mark Watkins. I do know who he was though.’

  Kim and Marie paid keener attention.

  ‘Well, I don’t mean actually know him. This was after Mark was killed, during the police investigation and the trial and everything. We’d just set up the campaign and it was still all in the news, we had the TV and the press knocking around quite a lot. Anyway, the far right found the office building where we were meeting and we used to get these gorillas hanging around outside, heckling us. This bloke I’m talking about, he was there from the start and he was one of the few who stayed for quite a while after most of them had got bored and given up.’ She shrugged again. ‘He never used to do much beyond shout and spit and chuck the odd bottle, but he was always there.’

  ‘D’you know his name?’ Marie said.

  Miss Carmichael shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Not to worry.’ Kim made a note. In that sort of public order situation there were bound to have been police about; likely NCIS would know, or be able to make a shrewd guess, who the man was. She said, ‘You’re sure you can’t think of any reason why he’d want to threaten you specifically?’

  ‘Because Mark was my cousin for a start,’ Grace Carmichael said. Having stopped trying to work overtime, she was answering them now in a more serious and focused way. ‘It’s been all over the news you guys think there might be a connection with the Bentons. Maybe he’s scared I might remember something that incriminates him.’

  ‘What might that be?’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘’Cause surely by threatening you he’s taking more of a risk of jogging your memory?’

  ‘Like I said,’ she insisted, ‘I wasn’t there with Mark when he died - I only wish I had been. Maybe he doesn’t know who I am. Maybe he just wanted to have a go at somebody connected with the campaign, and he remembered my face same way I remembered his.’

  ‘Too far-fetched,’ Marie said outside, turning the ignition key.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘In the whole of London, this bloke just happens to randomly recognize a face in the crowd from a demo years ago and decides to run up and threaten her in broad daylight?’

  ‘You reckon she was targeted?’ Kim said.

  ‘Maybe. What for, I have no idea.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kim belted herself in. ‘Let’s head over to Lewisham nick. I wanna fax the description to NCIS and talk to that DC, see if Miss Carmichael told him anything she didn’t tell us. What’s his name again?’

  ‘Cooper.’

  As they pulled away, a grey-green Volkswagen passed them and parked in the space they’d just vacated. A man got out and went into the house.

  ‘Must be the boyfriend,’ Marie said.

  ‘Reckon he saw us?’

  ‘So much,’ Marie sighed, ‘for her not wanting to worry him.’

  A vexed question, and one Sandra Jones was in no hurry to ask. She’d agreed to do so at the prompting of Neil, who wanted his life back. Sandra had retorted that she supposed he didn’t think Nina did too, but she went ahead and broached the subject anyway.

  ‘I need time,’ Nina said. They were in the Joneses’ bathroom. The hiss of the shower all but drowned out her voice. Sandra dried her hands and glared up at the extractor fan, which wasn’t helping.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s all got a bit daft?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Don’t you think - ? Oh, bugger it.’ She raised her voice. ‘You’re the one stuck at my place while he’s sitting pretty at your parents’. I mean for fuck’s sake, you should’ve chucked him out.’

  ‘If I went back, I’d have to.’

  ‘Why don’t you, then?’

  There was a long hiatus during which Sandra could all but see Nina’s thoughts wafting over the curtain with the steam. Eventually the shower went off and she stuck her head out, dripping over the floor.

  ‘I can’t face it. There’ll be a scene.’ She looked round with a s
hiver and a sad frown. ‘Where did I...?’

  In her distracted frame of mind, Sandra couldn’t blame Nina for hanging her towel up on the peg under her clothes. She extracted it and passed it across.

  ‘Ta,’ Nina said, wrapping it around herself. They sat on the side of the bath. She said, ‘Mum and Dad, you see. Paul hasn’t said anything. I can tell from talking to them on the phone.’

  ‘So they don’t know what the fuck’s going on, basically?’

  ‘They think the sun shines out of his arse.’

  ‘About the only ones left who do,’ Sandra muttered, and instantly regretted it. ‘Sorry.’

  Nina glared at her. ‘Imagine having to go in there and explain to them why I’m giving him the elbow. “Sorry to break up the happy home, but your beloved son-in-law’s been using your bed to dip his wick in some slut.” I don’t know what they’d do.’

  Sandra sighed. ‘Of all the places,’ she said, incredulous still. ‘I mean why? How dim can you get?’

  ‘Why?’ Nina echoed. Her fingers gripped the top of the towel and twisted, pulling it tighter. She said again, in despair, ‘Why?’

  ‘I know.’ Gently, Sandra laid a hand on her friend’s bare, wet shoulder. Imagine what must be going on in her head, the fevered perplexity over what Paul’s infidelity was, of what she’d done, or not done, to drive him to it; of whether it was a one-night stand or, as seemed more likely from his recent behaviour, something more serious. Imagine? She didn’t have to imagine. She got the inner workings of Nina’s head at first hand, every evening.

  Suddenly Neil had a point.

  She said, ‘So why not stop fannying around and do something about it?’

  ‘I will,’ Nina muttered, ‘in time.’

  ‘That’s an excuse.’ Sandra lied, ‘I’ve seen it before. With my sister.’ Pressing home her advantage before Nina could raise an objection along the lines that Sandra’s sister was blissfully married with six children, she added, ‘Haven’t you at least tried to find out who this bint is?’