The Charnel House in Copperfield Street

by Tim Ellis

  ***

  It was late. Why hadn’t he heard from DS Pratt? He tried calling him, but was diverted to voicemail. He wasn’t worried yet, but he knew he soon would be if Pratt didn’t call.

  He grabbed a beer from the fridge, took a long swallow of the ice cold liquid, walked out onto the balcony of his sixth-floor apartment on Thorney Street and looked out at the boats chugging by on the Thames. He could see the flickering lights of the traffic on Lambeth Bridge, and beyond that – Lambeth Palace. When it was functioning, he could hear different parts of the Westminster Quarters from Big Ben every quarter of the hour. On Sunday mornings, he could also hear the bells from Westminster Cathedral summoning the faithful for the church service. The only thing he’d been faithful to was lucre.

  Pratt had men with him, weapons . . . In fact, a veritable arsenal. They were all experienced men as well. What could possibly go wrong against two women and two men with a camera? Nothing. He was being paranoid. He switched on his Naim Uniti Nova stereo system, found Clair De Lune by Claude Debussy on his playlist, sat down on the white leather sofa and closed his eyes.

  He couldn’t relax though. Relaxing when the city was burning all around him was not in his nature, so he pushed the power button on his Apple MacBook Pro with the intention of carrying out some research.

  Just who was Ruth Lynch? Why did John Lupton pick her? He googled her.

  Immediately, he was impressed and concerned. She had her own Wikipedia page; a Facebook presence with over 100,000 likes; a Twitter account (@RuthLynch) with 250,000+ followers; a profile on LinkedIn; a website that was out-of-date; and a series of interviews on YouTube. Her real name was Ruth Lynch-Guevara – the granddaughter of Ché Guevara, no less. A celebrity in her own right with powerful friends. What the hell was she doing having a child with Quigg and living in a commune?

  She’d exposed a number of miscarriages of justice. For example, she proved that the confession of Adam Ross to the murder of student nurse Jenny Moore in 2005 was obtained through police brutality and therefore unsafe; and that the rape and murder of twelve year-old Gail Roy by David Perry in 2007 was falsely convicted when the police withheld key forensic evidence at the trial. She was one of the journalists responsible for making public MPs fraudulent expense claims. And, more recently, she narrowly missed out on the Private Eye Paul Foot Award for Investigative and Campaigning Journalism when she covered the story of DI Quigg and DC Heather Walsh bringing the Apostles’ paedophile ring to justice.

  It seemed that she was no stranger to controversy either, or targeting the police and making them look like a bunch of incompetents, but maybe they were. It was an unwritten rule that if you were going to oil the wheels of justice to obtain a conviction, then you made sure there were no witnesses, no CCTV footage and no trail of evidence that would lead back to bite you in the arse. Inference was all well and good, but without proof of any wrongdoing it was all smoke and mirrors.

  So, he wasn’t dealing with an amateur looking to make a name for herself – she’d done her apprenticeship in the trenches. It also appeared that she regularly worked with Dennis Ford and Nate Cullen – they were a team.

  Well, teams were made to be broken, or was that something else? Either way, they were trouble. He was right to send Pratt after them, and talking of which, where the hell was the Sergeant?

  He phoned again, but was diverted to voicemail a second time. Maybe Pratt had switched his phone to silent, because he was in the middle of something. But then again, maybe he hadn’t. The needle on his worry meter jumped a couple of points on the scale. He decided, rather than working himself up into a rage, that he’d phone Sergeant Bob Carlton in the surveillance van.

  It rang, but Bob didn’t pick up. Eventually, the call diverted to voicemail. He didn’t bother leaving a message. Instead, he called each one of DS Pratt’s team: Laidlaw, Binnington, Martin and Murphy – none of them answered. Now he was concerned. The needle on his worry meter was holding its own in the red “danger” zone. What the hell was going on?

  He called Inspector Jim Bennett.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Pratt and his team have gone missing, and I’m not getting any answer from Bob Carlton in the surveillance van. Can you go and find out what’s happening?’

  ‘It’s past midnight, Sir. I’m in bed.’

  ‘It wasn’t a request, Jim. Sleep is for the innocent. Call me when you get there.’ He ended the call.

  He’d done all he could for now. While he waited for Jim’s call, he accessed Quigg’s personnel file on the MPS server and had to snigger at the man’s first name. No wonder he called himself Quigg.

  Mmmm! A bit of a maverick by all accounts. The Commissioner passed complex and weird cases to him, which he seemed to solve in some way or another. His partners didn’t seem to last very long though. Walsh was shot in a hospital bed by a paedophile; Kline joined Mossad; God only knows what happened to Dwyer underneath Hammersmith Cemetery – they never found her body; and his new partner – Jezebel Rummage – was the daughter of an African missionary. Good luck to her, he thought. Quigg’s personal life was a bombsite. He certainly wasn’t anybody’s idea of an average copper. The more he read, the more concerned he became. If Pratt killed his women, then Quigg would come after them. And he wasn’t the type of copper to give up. There didn’t seem to be any point in waiting for the inevitable to happen.

  He called Medusa, or whatever her name was.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have another target for you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A police officer.’

  ‘I’m not really interested in what he does. Just give me a name and address.’

  He told her.

  ‘Another accident?’

  ‘Your decision, but you should know that there are three security guards and a German Shepherd there twenty-four hours a day. Also, he lives with three women and four children.’

  ‘Is it a commune?’

  ‘Who knows, but I’m hoping that two of the women will have already been taken care of tonight.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  The line went dead.

  Chapter Twelve

  As she interrogated each SIM card belonging to the five officers’ second phones, she began to build up a spider’s web of corruption. Not only that, but their regular phones enabled her to profile each officer through family, friends and other contacts.

  At some point, the five men woke up.

  She caught them staring at her and smiled. Her hand moved towards the stun gun.

  Eyes opened wide in terror.

  She cut off the duct tape around each man’s mouth. ‘I think you know what will happen if you cry out, don’t you?’

  They nodded.

  ‘That will also happen if you start talking without my permission, if you fail to answer the questions I ask you, or if I get the weird feeling that something isn’t right . . . Oh! And don’t turn your heads to pass knowing looks to each other either, that’ll really piss me off. Do you understand?’

  They nodded vigorously.

  ‘Good. I’m not promising anything, but the only possible way you could get out of this alive is if you fully cooperate with me. There are five of you, so four are expendable – get my drift?’

  They nodded again.

  She gave them all a swig of water from a plastic bottle. ‘I could say I’m sympathetic, but I’d be lying – I’m not. Corrupt coppers are the worst human beings on the planet. We put you in a position of trust to protect us. Instead, you betray us. No, nothing worse in my opinion. Not only that, you were going to kill my two friends tonight because they decided to investigate your dirty dealings. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, you were probably going to come and kill me and the children next . . .’

  Pratt opened his mouth as if to speak.

  Her hand drifted to the stun gun.

  He closed his mouth.

  ‘I’m not interested in anything you have to say unless it’s an answer t
o a question I’ve asked. I thought I’d made that quite clear. Maybe you need reminding?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Okay. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time, but it’s my one and only warning. Don’t think you can appeal to my dormant humanity or empathy, because for you five pieces of excrement I have zero amounts of both. The only reality here is you, me and the stun gun . . . although I have other tools as well. And don’t think I wouldn’t use them to cut out your heart, or slice off your penis – I’m going to do what’s necessary to find out every last detail of your corrupt operations. Also, don’t get the idea that someone will come and rescue you, because they won’t. Oh, I have no doubt that they’ll be looking for your GPS signals, but they won’t find them. In here, you have no family, friends, home, loved ones, identity, or freedom. And you can forget any ideas that you still might be unique, omnipotent, invulnerable and impenetrable. I’ve invaded your body, and now I’m going to invade your psyche and possess your mind. You belong body and soul to me. We’re going to bond like tragic lovers. In the coming nightmare I’m your only hope, your only hold on a fragile reality.’ She looked at each one of them in turn. ‘Is there anything you’re unclear about?’

  They shook their heads.

  She pointed at Pratt. ‘Who’s in charge of everything?’

  He hesitated and his head began to turn sideways.

  Her hand wrapped itself around the stun gun.

  ‘DCI Victor Thackeray,’ Pratt blurted out.

  She stood up, found a metal crate that she turned upside down, stood on it and wrote Thackeray’s name high-up on the side of the white van with a black marker pen that she’d brought with her in her rucksack. ‘Just him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ she said, climbing down and fingering the stun gun. ‘I have the weird feeling you’re holding something back.’

  ‘No. You have to believe me. I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘We’ll see. Where does he work?’

  ‘Special Operations at New Scotland Yard.’

  With each answer Pratt gave, she continued to make notes on the side of the van.

  ‘What’s the name of the whistle-blower?’

  ‘John Lupton.’

  ‘And he is?’

  ‘The Clerk to the Committees at the IOPC.’

  ‘How did you know that Lupton had arranged to meet Ruth Lynch at the Victoria and Albert Museum?’

  ‘Lupton’s office phone and mobile have been tapped.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. DCI Thackeray ordered it, but I have no idea how he knew that Lupton would contact Lynch.’

  ‘Mmmm!’ She stared at what she’d written on the white van. There didn’t seem to be any obvious connection between Thackeray and Lupton at the IOPC. She drew a line between the two and a double-lined question mark.

  She carried on asking questions about the people involved and making notes on the side of the white Transit van. At some stage during the night, she realised that what she was creating was an organisational chart. The bastards were running the whole criminal enterprise like a well-oiled machine.

  Thackeray appeared to be the Chief Executive Officer, although she wasn’t convinced he was up there on his own. For each part of the organisation there was a director of operations. For example, DI Bill Hendriks was responsible for all drug smuggling activities; Inspector Julianne Mills was responsible for all cover-ups; DI Austin Crowe was responsible for bribing local and government officials, lawyers, judges and others; DCI Kevin Horne headed up the people trafficking operations; Inspector Marissa Wyk was in charge of prostitution, escort services . . .

  The names continued for fraud; control of the bankruptcy courts to seize assets by inflicting personal problems on innocent people; misdirecting legitimate funds into criminal activities; false charges; perjured testimony; blocking reports of criminal activities; protection racketeering; usury; theft, robbery and burglary of targeted cash from security depots, bullion, treasury bonds, gems and jewellery, art, banks, safe deposit boxes, high-security warehouses, cash clearing centres and vehicles.

  There was a shadow organisation being run deep underneath the Metropolitan Police Service and beyond. As well as section heads, group leaders, specialists and workers; there was also an information and communications technology section, an accountancy unit, special operations, disposal goods, a legal department . . .

  Ruth was going to piss herself when she saw all this. It was a fucking Aladdin’s cave of corruption.

  She heard a vehicle outside, went to the metal shutter and peered through a jagged gap – Jack Neilson was sitting in the driver’s seat of a dark-grey Mercedes Sprinter van.

  The headlights flashed.

  She pulled the shutter up, but walked in front of the van before it could move forward, and spoke to her father. ‘The place is turning into a parking lot. Have you got any more vehicles out there you’d like to park in here?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Let me move the Transit forwards – I’m using the side of it as a whiteboard. You can put this one on the left.’ She pointed. ‘It’ll be out of the way over there.’

  ‘You’re in charge.’

  ‘Damned right.’

  She moved the white van forwards.

  Jack drove the Mercedes van inside and swung left to tuck it into the place where Lucy had indicated, turned the ignition off and stepped out of the vehicle.

  Lucy pulled the shutter down.

  ‘Is that the surveillance van?’

  ‘Yes, and there are two men and a woman in the back.’

  ‘A woman! That should be interesting.’

  ‘I’ll get them out and sit them on chairs in a minute.’ He handed her a paper bag. ‘Rations. A couple of rolls and a bottle of orange juice.’

  ‘Superb,’ she said, ripping the bag open. ‘Cheese salad! Do I look like a cheese salad type of girl?’

  ‘There was limited choice. I could take them back and exchange them for a bag of crisps, if you wish?’

  ‘I’ll suffer in silence.’

  ‘That’ll make a change.’ He stood looking at what she’d written on the side of the van and said, ‘Impressive.’

  ‘My writing, or the criminal empire?’

  ‘Both. We seem to have opened up a rich vein of corruption.’

  ‘It’s a deep vein as well. I have the feeling that we’ve barely scratched the surface.’ She turned to look at the five men, licked her lips and took a swig of orange juice. ‘Mmmm! I didn’t think I’d like cheese salad, but it wasn’t too bad, if I’m being honest. It certainly filled the gaping hole in my stomach, which if you’d had any say in it would have been a real gaping hole.’ She caressed the stun gun. ‘So, ready to begin again?’

  They nodded vigorously.

  After her father had found three more chairs and another table, he pulled the unconscious bodies out of the surveillance van. He then dragged them along the floor, stripped them naked, sat them on the chairs with ropes around their necks and restrained them.

  ‘Don’t forget the duct tape,’ Lucy said.

  ‘I’m getting absent-minded in my old age,’ he said, picking up the roll of duct tape. Once he’d covered their mouths, he emptied their clothing of personal effects and laid the items out on the table. Sergeant Robert Carlton, Constables Mathew Scott and Valerie Cowley. I’ll leave the surveillance van to you.’

  ‘That’s fine by me.’

  ‘I’m going to have a rest now,’ Jack said. ‘Try not to wake me.’

  ‘I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse, but I can’t vouch for our guests if I have to use the stun gun on them.’

  ‘Do your best,’ he said, wandering to the back of the warehouse.

  ‘I always do my best. I taught myself that, because I had no fucking father when I was growing up.’

  ***

  Jim Bennett called him back at two thirty-five. He’d long since dropped off
to sleep fully-clothed on the sofa.

  ‘I hope you’ve got good news for me, Jim?’ he said, wiping the slobber from his chin.

  ‘Sorry, Gov. The surveillance van isn’t here.’

  ‘What do you mean, not there?’

  ‘I’m at the BT junction box on the corner of Goldhawk Mews, which is where they were hooked up to St Peter’s Church. The doors are still open, and there are wires hanging out at the bottom, but that’s all. It’s as if they left in a hurry, but what might have caused them to do that I have no idea. Also, I’ve had a look around, but there are no CCTV cameras nearby. It’s a mystery, Gov. I don’t suppose you’re open to the idea of alien abduction, are you?’

  ‘No, I think we can eliminate that as a possible lead.’

  ‘Then I’m all out of options.’

  ‘What about DS Pratt and his team?’

  ‘No sign.’

  He’d run out of ideas himself. ‘Okay, thanks for looking anyway, Jim. You can go back home to bed.’

  ‘Thanks, Gov.’

  The line went dead.

  Now what? Were they being attacked? Surely not. They were the police working undercover for God’s sake, and no one could prove anything other than that. Was a criminal gang trying to take back what they’d lost? No, it couldn’t be that? They had enough paid informers out there to have heard something. Lynch and her cronies couldn’t be ignored either. Pratt was following them; Bob Carlton’s surveillance van was monitoring their house. Surely the connection couldn’t be a coincidence. The men and vehicles had disappeared – to where? Were his people still alive? He was trying to pin the tail on the donkey in a pitch black room.

  Where were Lynch and her cronies? Did they go to Pimlico? He called Sergeant Richard Pollack.

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘It’s DCI Thackeray, Pollack.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Sorry to bother you in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Comes with the job, Sir.’