The Singhing Detective

by M. C. Dutton

  After eating the McMuffin and chips and slurping the coffee loudly, Mad Pete looked ready to talk.

  “I ain’t eaten for days, Mr Singh, there ’as been stuff going on.”

  Jazz leaned forward and started to get a bit interested. “Like what, Pete?” Pete squirmed in his seat and considered what he was going to say. Jazz looked at his watch; Sharon and Tony would be there in 20 minutes and he wanted Pete out of the way, he stunk.

  Getting impatient, Jazz said, “Come on, Pete, spit it out.” Seeing chips still rolling around Pete’s mouth, he quickly added with disgust, “Not literally.”

  He goaded him a bit more and told him to get on with it. Pete was not going to be hurried, he thought about how to start. He felt for the moment warm and fed and safer than he had for the last 10 hours. He told Jazz that he had done some stuff over the years but he would never be party to murder.

  Jazz sat up and took notice. “Murder? What the fuck do you mean? What murder?”

  Pete was trying to stay calm, but Jazz was spooking him again. The enormity of what he was going to tell him was making him more frightened by the minute. He started to tell Jazz about the murders that had happened in the last few days. Jazz interrupted him and said he knew of these. He wanted to know what this was all about. He told him to fucking sort himself out and start from the beginning and no excuses.

  Mad Pete looked at him and said slyly, “You don’t know nuffink, Mr Singh. I know everyfink.” Jazz looked and couldn’t believe Mad Pete was talking to him like this. Where did this low life get so much confidence? The look on Jazz’s face made Pete concentrate and tell all. He needed his help, he didn’t want to antagonise him.

  He told him that a few years ago someone else had come into town. They sold drugs cheaper than the usual crowd. They were setting up shop in most parts of the East End. He watched his step with the Triads and the Snakeheads. No one in their right mind would mess with them but this new lot were very accommodating and generous. They gave him stuff for free. He looked at Jazz with a certain amount of pride and said that all the young lads in Barking and around looked up to him and he gave them bits and pieces from time to time. The heroin was so easily available that he was now back on the stuff. Jazz looked at him, shocked that he had gone back down that path. He spluttered that it was given to him for nothing, they just wanted to have him on their side and this was his reward. He said it wasn’t a problem and he felt good on it. Jazz gave him a look of you have got to be kidding yourself, sunshine.

  In answer to a question from an incredulous Jazz, he said no, he hadn’t worried if it upset the Triads or Snakeheads. He reckoned he was just a small cog and they wouldn’t notice. Again Jazz gave him a look of you are definitely kidding yourself. So when, he asked, did the Triads or Snakeheads get heavy with him? Mad Pete looked down and rather sheepishly said the last few days had been a nightmare.

  He told Jazz that since he left Ilford all those years ago, the place had changed. It had been comfortable and he knew who was who and who to avoid. The new lot jiggled things up, he told Jazz. He went on and explained as best he could the set up as he saw it.

  “They pushed a bit and I didn’t understand why there was no trouble. The Triads and Snakeheads are not to be messed with. I sort of figured they weren’t bothered anymore. The Viets started to give me stuff and I figured it was OK. It was good stuff, Mr Singh. I would have been mad to pass it up.” He fidgeted in his chair and gave Jazz a look that passed for embarrassment. “I was stupid, Mr Singh. I didn’t read the signs.”

  Pete pulled himself together and, feeling comfortable, took a slurp of coffee and continued. “It all changed a few days ago when that old bird got killed in Newbury Park.” He saw Jazz shift and move forward, now very interested indeed. “It was the Viets who killed her and it seemed to start everyone off.” He looked pained and for a moment very frightened indeed. “I ’ad visits from the Triads, who knocked me about wanting to know who my contact was. I told them everything I knew but it was nothing much, just a street level thug. It was ’orrible, Mr Singh, I was very scared they were gonna kill me. Then I got a visit from the Snakeheads and they put a gun to my head. Well, I fair nearly dropped the contents of my belly there and then. I told them everything again but they hit me across the back of my head with the gun and left.” He took off his cap and lowered his head for Jazz to see the mess of hair towards the back of his head where the blood had congealed. Jazz winced at the sight of it. Pete stopped for a second and the silence was heavy with apprehension and disbelief.

  “What did they think you knew, Pete?” Jazz asked gently, he didn’t want to spook him. He knew that when spooked, Pete would go into a panic that bordered on a drug-induced madness and he would never get all the information from him.

  “Don’t know, Mr Singh,” was the truthful answer. “Think they just wanted a contact. They knew all the ground level Viets but they wanted to find out how to get to the top guys I suppose. Really odd, isn’t it, Mr Singh? Thought they would have sussed all that out before, wouldn’t you?”

  Jazz sat for a few seconds and thought. He wondered what the hell was going on. It all sounded far-fetched and stupid. He understood from Bam Bam that the Triads and Snakeheads were just biding their time to take over. If that was the case, they would have sussed out the top people running it by now.

  Sharon appeared; he looked at his watch and realised time had flown and he hadn’t got anything out of Pete worth having yet. He waved to Sharon and told her to get some breakfast and a coffee for Pete and himself. She looked at Pete and remembered him and wondered what he was doing here. She was about to find out. It took a few minutes for Sharon to come back with the food and the coffees. She sat near Jazz and quietly listened and watched.

  Pete looked at Sharon and clammed up. Jazz spent a few minutes reassuring him that Sharon was with him and he could trust her. Pete still looked uncertain and Jazz, fed up with him getting all poncy and pathetic on him, said through gritted teeth that he had better just get on with it otherwise he would be in serious trouble.

  Pete looked up at him and said, “I’m in serious trouble now, Mr Singh, and it’s all your fault!” It was getting really silly now and Jazz calmed Pete down and told him to drink his coffee.

  Pete decided to continue and said that it started the day after Jazz and the other two had come to his flat. “The Viets think I am some sort of grass and wanted to know what I told you.” Pete hugged himself for comfort. “Everyone is having a go at me, Mr Singh, and the Viets made me go to their place in Forest Gate. It was ’orrible; they ain’t nice at all, Mr Singh.”

  Jazz tried to look sympathetic but he needed more information. Pete was not telling him everything. Kindly, Jazz told him that it made sense to just tell him everything. He promised he wouldn’t judge him but if it was important he needed to know.

  Taking a deep breath, Pete nodded and just said it out loud, to the shock and disbelief of the pair of them. “Well, Mr Singh, they are gonna kill the poof you have with you.”

  After a sharp intake of breath, Jazz asked him to repeat what he had just said. By now, Pete was settling, he had got their full attention and he was getting comfortable; he repeated that the man who was on Jazz’s team, yes, the one called Tony, was going to be killed soon. He added that he thought they would have killed him too but he got away last night. Pete continued to bemoan the fact that everyone was out to get him and he had no where to go that was safe. He scratched his left armpit and looked up, surprised to see that the attention was not on him. Jazz was on the phone and so was Sharon.

  “There is no answer from his phone, skip,” was all Sharon could say. She looked at her phone as if she expected it to tell her where Tony was.

  Sharon then rang Tony’s home number to see if he was there. Tony’s mother answered the phone. When asked if Tony was there, she took a deep breath and started a mournful rant about always being the last to be told anything; that Tony hadn’t come home last night and he hadn’t bo
thered to ring and tell her and how she had had a very fitful night worrying about him. She finished by saying children were so ungrateful and how she had done everything for him. Sharon thanked her and said when she saw him she would get Tony to ring her. As she was about to say goodbye, Tony’s mum added, as an urgent afterthought, “Why are you asking? Wasn’t he on duty with you?”

  Sharon said that he wasn’t but she felt sure he was somewhere and had just forgotten to tell anyone. They each knew this was highly unlikely. Even Sharon, who had known him only a short time, knew Tony would never go off all night without telling his mother. After further promises of contacting her as soon as Tony was found, a subdued Mrs Sepple said goodbye but was left with a nagging fear that her Tony was in some sort of trouble.

  Having heard the conversation Sharon was having with Tony’s mother and knowing Tony was not tucked up nice and snug in bed and having a duvet day, Jazz was on the phone to the office. It was out of his hands now, he needed help. Bob answered and said he would organise the SO19 team for him but he needed an address. In all the panic he had forgotten to ask Pete where in Forest Gate this house was. Pete didn’t want to go back there, he never wanted to go anywhere near it again, but when questioned further, he said he didn’t know the number of the house or the street name. He said he would recognise it if he was there but he wasn’t going anywhere near it.

  “I ain’t going near that place, even if you got a van full of police and guns,” he protested loudly.

  Jazz grabbed him by the arm and pulled him at speed towards the police station and the car that was waiting for them there.

  THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME

  It had been one hell of a day. Tony was tired but he wanted to make his mark. Sharon found it all so easy and he just never seemed to get a look in. The bit of paper he found was more than he had told them. It was a small book with figures in it; some sort of accounts, he reckoned. Inside he found an address in Forest Gate and he wondered, nay hoped, it would make him the hero of the day.

  It was all a bit much to ask for, and he knew that he was most probably chasing a wild idea but wouldn’t it be great if he came across something useful? He should have passed this to Jazz, he knew that. But for once, why shouldn’t he have a bit of stardust? He was always second best. This was the first time he had gone against standard police procedures and he felt a bit nervous. He shouldn’t be on any sort of stakeout without backup or at least phone backup. Heck, he thought, if was nothing then no one would be any the wiser and if it was a good lead then they would forgive him and call him a hero. All the murders discovered today had made East London very unsettled. Every police officer on the beat was looking over his or her shoulder, not knowing what was going to happen next. All the small-time hoodlums were keeping quiet and watching what was going to happen next. It felt very surreal.

  He picked up some Kentucky fried chicken and a Coke and sat outside the house. He had time, he was just going to sit and watch for a while. It was a dark road with trees that reached up and encompassed the sky and houses that seemed too tall for the narrow road. All the houses were bunched together, which made Tony feel a little claustrophobic .

  Now he was here he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He hoped he would look inconspicuous in his Ford Fiesta, it wasn’t an outstanding car. He loved his little Ford Fiesta. He felt comfortable in his car, it was his domain. Not even his mother would say anything about his car and she rarely went in it, preferring to take the bus to do her shopping. She said she enjoyed meeting her friends and going on the bus with them. On dark days Tony thought she enjoyed moaning about him and suspected she told her friends he never helped her with the shopping. She could be a bit of a martyr sometimes, he conceded. He couldn’t remember his dad ever saying nice things to his mother. His dad died a few years ago and left him with the responsibility of looking after her. She was a wonderful woman in many ways and he sort of understood why she did some not very nice things; it was to get some attention.

  Although she loved him, he knew he was a disappointment to her. She always said she wanted a daughter-in-law to talk to and she wanted grandchildren. Again, on dark days he thought she would hate another woman around her, although she could bitch happily about her, which might give her pleasure. As for grandchildren, she had never seemed that maternal to him. He lived uneasily with her disappointment. The least he could do was try and understand her and at the same time forgive her.

  He ate the Kentucky fried chicken carefully. He hated the thought of dripping fat down his suit or on his tie. He only bought good quality suits, he knew it made him look good and younger, accentuating his lean and athletic look. His hair was the short spiky trendy look worn by a lot of young men and it suited him.

  She would be ringing him soon to check where he was and he didn’t want that tonight. This was his time. On that note, he took out his mobile phone and switched it to silent and tucked it in his inside pocket. It was one of the slimline phones that wouldn’t make a bulge in his jacket.

  He was enjoying just a little peace and quiet and time for himself. Life had been very busy of late and when he got home his mother never left him alone, always wanting to know what he had done during the day and who he had spoken to. He often thought that she was checking up on him, wanting to know if he had been a ‘good boy’. She disapproved of his manicured nails and all the hand cream and face cream he used. He had taken to hiding it all in a locked cupboard in his room. He was a little fed up with all the funny looks she gave him. He loved his mother but sometimes, and he licked his lips to think of the right words, well, sometimes she was too interested in what he was doing. He knew she loved him and most of the time that was enough for him to forgive her intrusions. She would be worried for him if she could see him now, he thought. This made him smile. This was real police work.

  He must have sat there for quite some time. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. It was getting very dark and the street lights were almost hidden by the branches of the trees. The shadows lengthened and made him feel the road was not a friendly place to be. Most of the houses had drawn curtains at their windows so no friendly house lights brightened the road, making the darkness more sinister and contained. The house he was watching had a glimmer of light which seemed to emanate from somewhere towards the back of what was the hallway; this boded well, he thought. He felt full and warm and comfortable sitting there. He felt so relaxed that when a car pulled up across the road, it made him jump. He slumped down in the seat and watched.

  The car was a Mercedes and the man who got out with the aid of two henchmen was a big chap. Tony watched as he struggled to get out of the car. The man briefly looked around and his two henchmen went ahead into the house that Tony was watching. He waited until they had gone inside and shut the door behind them.

  He realised he had to do something now. He couldn’t just sit there. He didn’t know if the tremor in his hands were caused by excitement or fear; he had never been in a situation like this before. He quietly got out of his car. By the look of the man and his two henchmen, this was not a family visit. He thought for a moment that he should ring into the station to tell them where he was, as protocol expected, but on reflection he rejected that idea. If it amounted to nothing, he would just look stupid. He told himself he would call them if it looked interesting and that made him feel better.

  The houses had the smallest of front gardens. He noted that it would only take one step from the pavement and he would be up to the front door. He wasn’t sure what to do. The light had been switched on in the front room. He could see light shining through the window even with curtains drawn. There was a small gap in the curtains and he carefully positioned himself so he could see through the gap but whoever was in there wouldn’t see him. He peered in but he couldn’t see much at all. The room was depressingly dim, he reckoned they had a 40 watt bulb for light. He couldn’t make out anyone in the room. There was only a portion of the room he could see and no one was standing or
sitting there. It was very frustrating and he nearly overbalanced and had to put his hand up on the window to stop him falling. He turned to go back to the car and ring the station for moral support. He suddenly felt spooked and ill at ease.

  He never made it to the car. As he crossed the road to his Ford Fiesta, two men came up from behind him and, one on each side, they grabbed his arms and held him in a vice-like grip. One whispered in his ear,“You wanted to see what’s inside, well this is your chance.” He was hauled into the house and taken to the back room. He looked from one to the other to see what they were going to do. He told them that he was a police officer and he wasn’t alone, but they just smirked at him and told him to sit down and shut up. He did as he was told and watched to see what their mood was. He was scared and had no idea what to do. One of the men had gone off and left him with a bored thug. He was well-dressed in a black suit. He looked like either a chauffeur or a funeral director. Tony shuddered at the thought. They knew he was a policeman and were most probably just trying to frighten him. That thought calmed him and the whirlwind of panic that was building abated. He was a professional and doing his job. He looked intently at the face of the thug in front of him. He would remember him in an identity line-up. They were not that clever. He would get them.

  He could hear footfalls across the ceiling and voices coming from upstairs. It sounded like an argument. Someone was rushing down the stairs making a tremendous noise, each foot thumping the steps. Suddenly the door opened and in rushed Mad Pete. “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” was the breathless greeting from Mad Pete. Tony just shrugged, not knowing what was going on. The next moment, two Vietnamese people came rushing in and grabbed Pete. Something had upset Pete and he was going into one of his druggy hysteria sessions. The Vietnamese men looked perplexed by him and ushered him out of the room. The invasion knocked Tony out of his complacency and again he felt that panicky swell rising from his stomach. There was too much going on here and common sense kicked in. Why on earth would they keep him here and let him go? He could recognise everyone. No one had bothered to hide their face. They were going to kill him.