by Ellis, Tim
‘Has anybody touched anything?’ Stick asked.
‘Absolutely not. As soon as my constable saw the hole in the windscreen he called me. I told him to check for signs of life – he found none, so he left everything just as it was and I contacted DCI Kowalski.’
Stick nodded. ‘Thank you, Sir.’ He looked around. They were on the southbound A406 – or the North Circular Road – a couple of miles before the slip road onto the A12. On their right was South Woodford, Snaresbrook and Wanstead; on their left Roding Valley Park.
He’d expected to see a bridge, but there were no bridges close by.
‘What are you looking for?’ Koll asked.
‘The shooter’s position.’
‘Do you know about guns and things?’
‘Yes. I was in Special Ops for three years.’
‘Wow! I didn’t know that.’
‘There’s no reason why you should.’
‘Is that why the Chief gave you the case?’
‘No, I don’t think so. We were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Yes, he knew about guns and things. Officers in Special Ops were trained snipers, and he had been one of the best – that’s why they wanted to keep him. They’d taught him how to kill from concealed positions at distances that couldn’t be detected. To aim for the “apricot” – the medulla oblongata at the base of the skull that controls involuntary movement – for an instant kill. He knew about hide sites, targeting, baiting, when to re-locate, sound masking and such like.
What concerned him now was whether the killer might still be around – waiting for another target. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had been shot to lure police officers into the kill zone.
He found a fire officer. ‘Can your men drag the blue Volvo the right way up?’
The fireman nodded. ‘No problem.’
‘You stay here,’ he said to Koll. ‘When the car’s standing on all four wheels and you can get inside I want to know who the victim is, where she lives and what she does for a living.’
Koll nodded. ‘I’ll try and find her bag.’
He then went to talk to a bulky, grey-haired forensics officer. ‘Have you brought your ballistics expert with you?’
‘That would be me – Richard Buswell.’ He offered his hand.
Stick shook it. ‘DS Rowley Gilbert. We need to calculate the trajectory of the bullet by . . .’
‘. . . triangulation. You don’t need to teach me how to suck eggs. I have a degree in egg-sucking.’
‘Of course, sorry. What about the . . . ?’
‘. . . stopping distance?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you’d like to walk with me, I’ll show you where the car swerved off the road. We should be able to triangulate the trajectory of the bullet from there once I can get in the car and examine the victim.’
‘Excellent.’
‘From what the traffic cops tell me there are no skid marks, which suggests the driver didn’t brake because she was already dead.’
They reached the point at which the car left the road, which was a good three hundred yards away from where the Volvo had come to a stop.
‘The car went up the bank and flipped over. It then slid along the road, got hit by the car following it, flipped over again, shot up the bank, skidded some more and eventually came to a stop where you found it.’
Stick looked back the way they’d come. If he was selecting a location himself he’d choose the group of trees to his left. A sniper wouldn’t have to climb very high to obtain a clear view and angle into an oncoming car – he pointed. ‘Up there.’
‘I would say so,’ Buswell said. ‘I’ll still triangulate the trajectory once I’ve examined the entry and exit wounds, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of choice in location.’
‘You’ll get your men up there?’
‘Are you new?’
‘Just got my Sergeant. This is my second case in charge, but I’ve been at Hoddesdon a while.’
‘Congratulations on your promotion, but you should know that I’ve been doing this job for a good few years, and I know exactly what to do.’
‘Yeah, sorry. No offence intended.’
‘And I’ll take it like that.’
‘I’m just making sure I cover all the bases – don’t want to make a hash of things on my first case.’
‘I thought it was your second case.’
‘Well yeah, but they both got allocated today.’
‘Just relax, DS Gilbert. Come up to forensics tomorrow morning and I’ll give you what I’ve got.’
‘Thanks.’
They walked back to the melee of vehicles. Buswell nodded at him and drifted off to co-ordinate the efforts of his men.
Koll approached. ‘Her name is Doctor Samantha Morrow. She’s thirty-two, separated with two children and works for a company called GeneTest, which carries out genetic and paternity testing.’
‘She’s a doctor?’
Koll shrugged. ‘Or she could be one of those research doctors,’ she said showing him one of Morrow’s business cards. ‘She has letters after her name: PhD, BM, MRCP.’
‘Possibly?’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Any idea where she was going or what she was working on?’
‘No. There’s a laptop inside the car, but it doesn’t look as though it’s going to be very helpful. I’ve got her address – she lives in Chingford. Maybe she has a home computer.’
‘What about GeneTest?’
‘They have their headquarters at Stone Hill Business Park in Chingford.’
‘Maybe that’s where she was going. Okay, at least we have a possible lead. Arrange for Victim Support officers to go round and tell . . . Do we know who’s looking after the children?’
‘No idea.’
‘Oh well, let Victim Support have the details. When they find out we obviously need to know. In the meantime, we’ll try and visit GeneTest later.’
He signalled to Richard Buswell while she made the call.
‘Yes?’
‘Sorry. There’s a laptop in the car . . .’
‘And you want to know if we can get into it and access the information contained therein?’
Stick’s face flushed. He shuffled his feet and grinned.
‘We’ll do the thorough job we always do, which no doubt will include accessing said laptop’s hard drive.’
‘Sorry.’
He went and found Inspector Singh. ‘You said there were seven injured, Sir.’
‘Yes I did.’
‘Serious?’
‘Cuts, bruises, broken bones. Nothing life-threatening.’
‘Did any of them see anything that might help us?’
‘No. There was a woman travelling behind the victim . . .’ He checked his notebook. ‘A Rosie Gill – she said it all happened so fast. One minute she was driving along, the next she saw the Volvo leave the road – she hit the right rear corner, and it was all she could do to keep control of her own car . . . then someone smashed into the back of her and she lost consciousness. It will all be in my report.’
‘Thanks, Sir. Well, I think we’ll let you get on with it.’
‘You’ll get my report tomorrow.’
‘It looks like a hit, Sarge?’ Koll said.
‘Except . . . this is England not America.’
***
‘No restraining order?’ Charlie said. ‘Are you trying to turn us into paupers?’
They were sitting in Charlie’s small office and there was hardly enough room to swing anything bigger than a pigmy hedgehog.
‘It’s not all about money, Charlie. If all you’re interested in is becoming a millionaire then I’ll go somewhere else.’
‘A millionaire! What of – lost causes?’
‘You’ll be booking your place in Heaven.’
He grunted. ‘I don’t think there’s much chance of that. Anyway, our client is Redbridge Social Services. We can’t simply decide that a restraining order isn’t going to work. I
f you’re of that opinion, then you need to set up a meeting to discuss it with the manager.’
‘Set up a meeting? There’s no time for that. You haven’t met Tug Muleford. He threatened to gang-rape me and leave me dead in an alleyway from a drug overdose. Have you seen what he did to me?’ She stood up and pointed to the holes in her tights and her bloody right knee.
‘You should never have gone round there on your own.’
She pretended to look around the office. ‘I don’t see a queue of bodyguards waiting to accompany me to dangerous meetings, and if you’d have come with me he’d have probably killed you there and then.’
‘All I’m saying is that you have to assess the risks. You could have asked the social worker to meet you there.’
‘She would have been no good. You haven’t met Tug Muleford.’
‘Ring the manager and discuss it with him. Have you got an alternative in mind?’
‘A refuge.’
‘That didn’t work for . . .’
‘. . . Lorna Boyce. Yes, I know, but that was different.’
‘Ring the manager . . .’
‘You keep saying that.’
‘Because it’s not our decision. I assume the social worker assigned to the case has had it for some time.’
She jumped up. ‘I’ll ring the manager, shall I?’
‘Good idea. At least then you’ll know whether it is an option.’
She had university tomorrow and not much time left today to sort the situation out. Moving outside, she sat at one of the two desks. They definitely needed new offices – large enough for both of them. She couldn’t make confidential phone calls with people walking in off the street all the time. She’d have to speak to Charlie about it.
‘Redbridge Social Services. How may I help?‘
‘I’d like to speak to the manager – Mr Graham Holt.’
‘One moment, please.’
She heard a click and then the ring tone.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr Holt?’
‘Yes.’
‘We haven’t met. My name’s Jerry Kowalski from Charlie Baxter’s office. We’ve been asked to . . .’
‘. . . Obtain a restraining order for Mr Muleford?’
‘That’s right. Well, I went round to Miss Pettigrew’s house this morning . . .’
‘You did what?’
‘I went . . .’
‘You were asked to obtain a restraining order. You were not asked to visit our client . . .’
‘A restraining order won’t work,’ she blurted out.
‘I see . . . Sue Riley – the social worker assigned to the case – and I have discussed Leanne Pettigrew’s situation at length . . .’
‘But did anybody speak to Leanne?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course Sue has spoken to her client.’
‘I spoke to Leanne this morning. She says a restraining order would be a waste of paper. Mr Muleford arrived at the house . . .’
‘You were there when Muleford came back to the house?’
‘Yes. He threw me out and threatened to have me gang-raped and murdered if I came back’
‘I’m sure you think you’re helping, but . . .’
‘A refuge would be a better option.’
‘As I said before – Sue Riley and I have discussed the case in detail. We agreed that a restraining order – at this time – would be an appropriate response. If it fails to work, then we’ll examine other courses of action.’
‘By which time it might be too late for Leanne Pettigrew and her baby.’
‘In your opinion. We are the professional social workers. Your job is to obtain a restraining order, not interfere in the decision-making process of this case. You had no right to visit our client and discuss the restraining order with her. Now, can you do the job we’ve asked you to do, or shall I speak to my Service Manager and have your firm removed from the list of authorised solicitors?’
She was tempted to tell him where to shove his damned list, but she and Charlie had worked hard to build up and develop their client base, and Redbridge Council provided them with a lot of work – and money.
‘We’ll obtain the restraining order.’
‘Thank you, Ms Kowalski. And in future, I’d be grateful if you’d stay away from our clients. Stick to your own job and leave the social working to us.’
His voice was replaced by the dial tone.
She felt like a naughty schoolgirl as she put the receiver down in its cradle.
Bugger! Now what?’ She didn’t really have a choice but to complete the application form for the restraining order. Completing forms didn’t bother her, but she objected to completing them when she knew they were a waste of time.
Charlie popped his head out. ‘How did it go?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘I expected as much. We offer our clients legal advice only, Jerry. Today you were playing at being a bleeding heart. Stick to the law and leave the messy stuff to the social workers.’
‘I’ve learned my lesson. I don’t think I’d enjoy being gang-raped.’
‘No, I should imagine that wouldn’t be much fun.’
She sighed and began filling out Form N19B for a general restraining order.
***
Ruth Völker eyed the five other people sitting round the table and thought what a bag of shit it had all turned into. They weren’t her people, and it wasn’t her meeting, even though it was being held in her department on the seventh basement level at the Defence Geospatial Intelligence Fusion Centre (DGIFC) in Feltham, South West London.
Sir Peter Palmer – National Security Adviser and Secretary to the National Security Council – cleared his throat for some quiet and helped himself to two of her chocolate bourbons – the bastard. ‘Ladies and gentlemen.’
The other four gradually stopped talking.
There was Fran Hibbert with more double chins than a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig – Chairperson of the Joint Intelligence Committee and Head of Intelligence Analysis; General Jon Donaldson – a loose cannon with the Defence Intelligence Staff – who had a thousand-yard stare due to the length of time he’d spent undercover behind enemy lines in the Falkland Islands, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan; John Webb – the long-serving Head of G Branch at MI5 Counter Terrorism – who, it was rumoured, had been involved in the CIA-run Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961; and finally there was Nana Rodriguez – the Head of Cryptanalysis in the Directorate of SIGINT at GCHQ – who was far too beautiful to be so intelligent and far too young to be involved with these fossils.
‘How bad is it?’ Sir Peter got right to the point. ‘Can anyone tell me?’
Following an interim investigation, they were here to discuss the recent events that had transpired at Basement 7. It wasn’t the destruction per se that everyone was concerned with, but the fact that someone had gained access into the facility and more than likely stolen enough top secret information to sink a battleship – or at least a Conservative government.
Hibbert’s face wobbled as she spoke. ‘We don’t know for sure that data was . . .’
Webb interrupted her. ‘I think we can safely assume the data was taken. No doubt, in the fullness of time, we will reap the whirlwind.’ He had cropped steel-grey hair, a slow measured voice and a tic in the loose skin underneath his left eye. ‘In the meantime, I hope we have people working on this? We need to discover which organisation is responsible for killing our people and taking our data.’
‘Yes,’ Hibbert said with a nod that resembled a minor tsunami. ‘I have utilised the resources at my disposal and assigned my best people to work on this.’
‘To answer your question, Sir Peter,’ Nana Rodriguez said. ‘We carried out a threat assessment of the data that could have been stolen . . .’
Sir Peter surreptitiously palmed another two of her chocolate bourbons. ‘At last, someone who can answer a simple question – please continue, Miss Rodriguez?’
‘If all the data contained in the
list that we received was actually taken, then the government would be unlikely to survive the fallout. In fact, the security community would also be left vulnerable to attack. If you’d like it in numbers on a scale from one to ten, then twenty-three would be an appropriate figure.’
Ruth Völker shook her head in disgust. When she’d received the top secret file containing the list of information that had been stored on Basement 7’s server she nearly had a heart attack. There – on the fourth page – were her Epsilon files. All fucking five of them – warts and all.
She leaned forward. ‘What I’d like someone to tell me is how and why Basement 7 had all these top secret files on its server. I’d destroyed and forgotten about certain files, and yet, here they are again – come back to give me a coronary.’
‘An administrative oversight I’m afraid, Dr Völker,’ Sir Peter said. ‘The information stored on the server was missed in the last security review. In fact, Basement 7 was scheduled for closure and the personnel reassigned in 2011, but due to the change of government in 2010 it slipped through the proverbial net. As a consequence, when the security review was carried out late last year, Basement 7 wasn’t on anybody’s list.’
‘That’s preposterous,’ General Donaldson said. ‘Surely someone must have noticed that people were being paid, claims were being submitted, money was being allocated and so forth?’
The corner of Sir Peter’s mouth curled upwards. ‘Ah yes, you’re referring to joined-up government where departments talk to each other. Sadly, that’s not something the security services are renowned for. In this instance, departments within the same service couldn’t seem to communicate with each other effectively either – if at all. If any of us survive this debacle, it’s something that needs to be resolved.’
‘That still doesn’t answer my question, Sir Peter. How and why did my files end up on that server?’
‘I can tell you that,’ Fran Hibbert said. ‘Remember when computer back-ups were the norm and completed overnight onto tapes?’
With the exception of Nana Rodriguez, the others nodded.