Rat Poison

by Margaret Duffy

‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I only know him as Red.’

  ‘Known him long?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d just met him that evening.’

  ‘That’s not true though, is it? You’d been going around with him for a while. To meetings. With at least two other people who were there that night.’

  ‘Yes, do stop lying,’ Patrick said, playing with a pen on the table before him. ‘One of whom is a London mobster and the other is his sidekick, a woman with a very handy line in all kinds of death. You’re actually a very stupid woman, Gilly, and I want to know exactly what your role was in all this.’

  ‘I ain’t stupid and I didn’t have no role. Red just liked to have me along, that’s all.’

  ‘He fancied you,’ I said.

  ‘’Course. Why shouldn’t he?’

  OK, perhaps she’d had a bath that particular week.

  ‘How did Red get involved with these people?’ Patrick wanted to know.

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘And his responsibility was what?’

  ‘Not a clue. The blokes always got in a huddle together and whispered.’

  ‘Look,’ Patrick said with amazing patience. ‘This mob were planning gang warfare on a large scale. Your only claim to fame so far in the criminal stakes is to get drunk far too often and stand on street corners, soliciting. That isn’t quite what professional criminals are looking for by way of talent. Why were you at the meetings?’

  ‘I’ve already told yer, Red liked me there.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Chucked you over?’ I queried.

  ‘No!’

  ‘But he’s gone off somewhere.’

  ‘He isn’t from round here – works in London for most of the time.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask him?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t the sort of bloke you pestered with questions.’

  Patrick asked, ‘Was he a close friend of Uncle?’

  ‘Look, I ain’t got nothing to do with shootings.’ The woman muzzed up her hair a bit more, her fingers raking through it. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Please answer the question.’

  ‘I don’t know any uncles.’

  ‘The geezer whose birthday it was.’

  ‘Oh, him! That was Brad. He was horrible – and that bag with him.’

  ‘Was he chummy with Red?’

  ‘Yes, but Red was very polite to him.’

  ‘Did Red carry a gun?’

  ‘I – I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Did he?’

  ‘At the meetings he did.’

  ‘Where were these meetings held?’

  ‘At pubs in the sticks. I can’t remember the names.’

  ‘Was one of them the Ring o’ Bells at Hinton Littlemore?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I still can’t understand why they recruited you.’

  ‘I told you, it was Red. He – he’s a bit strange, mind.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Nothin’ you could put your finger on. But he did like a lot of sex. All the time – in the toilets, anywhere.’

  ‘Which you were paid for.’

  ‘Well, of course! Would you work for nuffin?’

  ‘Was he around the night of the turf war? Did he take part?’

  ‘I don’t know. No, really, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Were you?’

  Silence.

  ‘Yes,’ Darke finally whispered.

  ‘Tell us what you were asked to do,’ Patrick requested.

  ‘Will it help me if I tell you?’

  ‘It might. I can’t guarantee anything. I’m not in charge of the case.’

  After a short pause while she undertook some mental wrangling, Darke said, ‘I was just a sort of lookout. I had to stand on a corner in George Street where I sometimes do and ring a number on a mobile they gave me – just let it ring a few times and then hang up – when I saw certain people coming along.’

  ‘How were you supposed to know what these people would look like?’

  ‘They just said watch out for a load of blokes either getting out of cars or already on foot. I was to call out to them and keep them talking for a bit, chat them up.’

  ‘To give other people time to get into position?’

  ‘S’pose. I didn’t stay around to find out what happened. I went home.’

  ‘But you knew they’d be ambushed in some way.’

  ‘I wasn’t told.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘But it all went wrong, didn’t it?’ the woman cried out. ‘They came in cars and didn’t stop for me to chat them up. Just drove right past and stopped on the corner of Milsom Street.’

  ‘It didn’t make any difference to the outcome though, did it?’ Patrick said. ‘Most of them were either killed or injured and a couple ended up being mutilated, probably by the woman you’ve just described as horrible. She is, literally, bloody horrible. Then, a few days later, you all met up to celebrate.’

  ‘It was Brad’s birthday,’ Darke muttered. ‘Or so he said.’

  ‘What did you talk about? How well the war had gone? How Brad soon planned to go into partnership with Charlie Gill and have Bath all sewn up between them?’

  ‘They did have a toast to . . . future business. I didn’t understand it really.’

  ‘What on earth did you think the shoot-out was all about then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t care a lot. I just wanted to have an evening out. I don’t normally get taken to eateries like that.’

  ‘Have you seen Red since that night?’ Patrick wanted to know, unable to prevent the expression of disgust on his face.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor any of the others?’

  ‘No, he paid me off and told me to get lost.’

  ‘He being Brad.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll be charged with being an accessory to murder.’

  ‘But I didn’t do nuffin!’

  ‘You were there. You took part in the planning. You took money, knowing full well what was going to happen.’

  ‘They was just a bunch of scum! It was Mick the Kick’s lot. They all deserved to die like dogs.’

  ‘How are they different from the mobsters you were working for?’

  ‘Brad’s clever. I was really frightened of him but he’s got brains. He said – ’

  ‘What?’ Patrick snapped when she stopped speaking.

  ‘He said he’d soon have all the police eating out of his hand and looked at Red. Red laughed. He will, you watch.’ With a self-satisfied smile she added, ‘Everyone’s got their price, even you sitting there so cold and posh. You’re no different to me when all’s said and done.’

  Speaking very softly, Patrick said, ‘Did he say he’d soon have all the police eating out of his hand?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve just said, haven’t I?’

  ‘Did he emphasize “all”?’

  ‘Yes, but what difference does it make?’ Darke asked, bewildered.

  ‘I’ll make sure you’re remanded in custody – for your own safety.’

  His face tight, Patrick got to his feet without another word and we left the room.

  ‘What do we have?’ he said, coming to a halt in the corridor that led towards Carrick’s office. ‘Working undercover, but bent? Undercover, threatened? Undercover, bought just for this one job? Who is he? Who does he work for? The Met in the shape of F9? Special Branch? No, that’s unlikely. Or even SOCA, for God’s sake. I need to talk to Mike – now.’

  ‘Red laughed,’ I reminded him. ‘So it’s unlikely he was threatened.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. And now he’s safely at home and any number of Bath cops could have been gunned down that night, never mind the innocent passers-by who actually were.’

  Furious, Patrick slammed into the DCI’s room, severely star
tling DS Keen in the process.

  ‘My apologies, I didn’t know you were in here,’ Patrick said. ‘But I think we have a maggot in the apple.’

  The commander was in a meeting so we deferred telling him the latest developments until later that afternoon when we could talk to him face to face.

  True to his promise Matthew asked no questions, helping to load his case and a few other possessions he felt he could not do without into the Range Rover. I knew he would ache for his computer but realized that it was not practical to take that too. The files he had sent to it from the pub were now safely stored on CD-ROMs and were in Patrick’s briefcase. I knew that the next Christmas present request would be for a state-of-the-art laptop. He would probably get it.

  ‘I wish Katie was coming really,’ he said wistfully.

  ‘I’m sure you know how excited she is about going off to a friend’s for a week or so,’ I said.

  We left an almost speechless with shyness Matthew in the care of Michael Greenway’s wife, Erin, at a large house in north Ascot and pressed on for SOCA’s HQ in Kensington. The commander was in yet another meeting and while we waited for him Patrick slipped one of the CDs into the computer he uses when working in the building.

  ‘These’ll take hours to go through,’ he murmured. ‘We need to give it to a boffin in the general office for a detailed analysis. This one seems to consist mostly of accounts with some words in some kind of home-made code.’

  ‘Nothing leaps out at you, though.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m still not sure why this Red character, who we mustn’t forget Matthew might have seen outside the pub that night, took Darke along.’

  ‘To give himself some kind of low-life cred, I expect. And for on-tap bonking.’

  ‘He isn’t fussy then.’

  I found myself on the receiving end of a lustful smile. ‘No, it’s only the cold, posh types who are fussy.’

  Any further conversation along these lines was then out of the question as Mike Greenway entered. We immediately thanked him for coming to the rescue.

  ‘No, it suits us well,’ Greenway said with one of his big smiles. He is a big man. ‘I have an idea that lad of yours is keen on the outdoors and fresh air. It’ll be a good thing to get Benedict away from his computer for a while.’

  I desisted from catching Patrick’s eye.

  ‘So this is the stuff Matthew gleaned from your village pub,’ said Greenway, in receipt of the CD-ROMs. ‘Worth looking at?’

  ‘The local mobsters held some of their planning meetings there,’ Patrick told him. ‘I’m assuming that was in the long back room that used to be a skittle alley.’ He placed another small packet on the commander’s desk. ‘That’s an unofficial official tape of an interview we conducted this morning with the Darke woman. She’s confessed to acting as lookout and will be charged accordingly. I think we have the beginning of a case against Uncle – or Brad Northwood as he’s calling himself now. Darke knew the man in the restaurant as Brad and he and Gill drank a toast to future business. Also, I think the man with red hair, ostensibly Darke’s boyfriend, is a cop.’

  Greenway swore under his breath, whispered an apology to me and then said, ‘I’ve got some news for you about him, or at least a man with red hair. He’s been seen at Brad Northwood’s place in Hammersmith, just coming and going. He drives an old British racing green MG sports car which is registered in the name of Anthony Beardshaw with an address in Woodford Green, Essex. Mr Beardshaw reported this motor stolen four months ago so God knows where it’s been hidden away until now. He’s been interviewed, is perfectly on the line and as bald as a coot. The Met has asked him to cooperate with them by keeping quiet and patient as we don’t want to grab red head yet.’

  ‘Do you have a photo of him?’ Patrick enquired.

  Greenway stabbed at his computer keyboard a few times and then swivelled the whole thing around for us to see what was on the screen.

  ‘Derek Jessop described him as short, thin and with ferrety eyes,’ I recollected, gazing at the fairly clear image on the screen before me. ‘That’s about right, even though you can’t see his eyes.’

  The picture had been taken on the doorstep of a house that appeared to be part of a terrace, the man in the act of looking round, a hand raised to ring the doorbell.

  ‘Not much change out of a small fortune for that place,’ Patrick commented. ‘The surveillance is obviously taking place in a house just about opposite. Do you want me to find out more?’

  An admonishing finger was wagged at him. ‘No, not in the way I think you mean, going down the chimney or whatever. But we have a reliable source of info that says he’s hiring. Interested?’

  ‘Ingrid and I have talked about this and I’ve given it some thought since. If you remember I reinvented myself as a mobster in order to get inside the empire of a Romford-based minor ditto not all that long ago. So, no, it’s too risky, there might be an overlap of honchos.’

  ‘You got quite seriously done over too,’ the commander mused.

  ‘Yes, and although I regard that as all part of the job there doesn’t seem to be much point in risking actually cracking under questioning this time when it’s not necessary to go undercover in the first place, not to mention getting shot on sight because someone recognizes me.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  Patrick smiled winningly. ‘I take it you won’t let me loose with a sniper’s rifle.’

  ‘No,’ Greenway replied heavily.

  ‘Only joking.’

  Yes, but if he was ordered to he would.

  ‘Is this red-haired man sacrosanct?’ Patrick went on to ask.

  ‘Only from the point of view that if the law grabs him the rest might scatter and we’ll lose the lot.’

  ‘Suppose he’s taken ill, say, in a restaurant.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Or trips over something in the street and breaks his ankle – taken out of circulation to be questioned that way.’

  ‘I agree. It probably wouldn’t arouse suspicion.’

  ‘Then my question stands and you really mustn’t let your imagination run riot. Would you like me to find out more?’

  ‘You’ll have to sell it to me a bit more,’ Greenway murmured.

  ‘Has he been followed to where he lives?’

  ‘No, not yet. It’s only within the past couple of days that he’s been spotted at the address in London.’

  ‘Could you arrange it? I’m not volunteering as it’s possible he’s been hanging around in Hinton Littlemore.’

  ‘OK, I’ll do that.’

  ‘Then we’ll be able to work out his routines. If he’s got any – he might just have been visiting when Matthew saw him.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t kick your heels while the job’s being done,’ the commander said as we all rose to leave. ‘No, sorry, that sounded as though I think you’re in the habit of—’

  ‘Kicking my heels?’ Patrick interrupted with a smile. ‘Ingrid and I will use some of the time for firearms training. This affair isn’t going to end with everyone handing around bunches of flowers. Did you have another job in mind?’

  ‘We’ve discovered that Joy Murphy doesn’t live at the Hammersmith address but has a top floor flat in a high-rise block in Notting Hill. Have a quiet look round. But don’t under any circumstances make contact with her.’

  The kind of weapons training that Patrick and I undergo is not merely firing at targets on an indoor range, although that is part of it. Far more interesting, useful and terrifying is the next stage where one is tossed, sometimes literally, into a mock-up in the bowels of a Ministry of Defence building where any kind of scenario can be created. Maze-like constructions, with interconnecting tunnels and cellars, are constructed out of blockboard, polystyrene and other materials supported by scaffolding and fronted by camouflage netting and painted cloths similar to those used on film and stage sets. There are always teetering stacks of fairly lightweight ‘stone
pillars’ – once upon a time it had been piles of tea chests – that can be nudged over by hidden gizmos to complicate matters together with the added interest of bare live but low voltage wires with a few potential water leaks to make them really bite. As its situation would suggest this second training ground is nothing to do with the police but belongs to the military. It is probably the fact that he helped set it up and wrote most of the original ‘scripts’ that has ensured that Patrick appears to be a life member.

  There were new authors now, of course, but the challenge remains: you start at one end and have to make your way to reach the other, usually a high point, perhaps a tower of some kind. There is a time limit. We use live ammunition on the mobile cardboard targets – the usual figure of an armed man carrying a sub-machine gun – that pop up like magic when things get difficult and if you do not hit them meaningfully within five seconds you lose a ‘life’, of which you are given three. This goes on while operatives with a handy line in unarmed combat stalk the tunnels and others, from up on a gantry by the control room, take careful aim at you with handguns, loaded with, yes, live rounds. It is a point of honour with Patrick that he gets round inside the time limit without losing a life and there is a tradition that they try to overpower him before he goes in for some serious demolition just for the hell of it.

  People often end up needing hospital treatment – health and safety there is absolutely none and I know for a fact that Commander Greenway is completely unaware of our participation. Otherwise he would want to have a go as well and the answer would be no. The reason for this is that, although the set-up is sometimes used by the police, for those without the right preliminary training, which Patrick and I received when working for MI5, it is very dangerous.

  ‘We’re bloody rusty,’ was Patrick’s magnificently encouraging conclusion on having completed the first stage at another venue, driven a short distance across London and, having arrived, travelled downwards for what had seemed half a mile in a lift.

  We donned dark blue tracksuits and non-slip boots, the latter I reckoned being the only generous nod to us staying in one piece. There were no ear defenders as with them we would not be able to hear people creeping up behind us.

  ‘As you’re with me they won’t play too dirty,’ he added.

  ‘It hasn’t felt like that on previous occasions,’ I commented dourly, thinking my accuracy so far had not been too bad. ‘If a bloke grabs me can I kick him in the goolies?’