The Slaughter Man

by Tony Parsons

  ‘They didn’t come from the west,’ I said. ‘They came from the north, off the North Circular or the M25.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘Laying driveways,’ I said. ‘It’s a suburban trade. They’re out-of-towners.’

  ‘And the ANPRs,’ Whitestone said. ‘How long would the DVLA keep data?’

  ‘Depends,’ I said. ‘If a car doesn’t have MOT, insurance, vehicle registration. If the car is owned by a person of interest. If it is doing something illegal. The DVLA would pass it on to the enforcing agency but keep it on their own database.’

  ‘How long?’ Whitestone said, her eyes suddenly fierce behind her glasses. ‘Potentially?’

  ‘Forever,’ I said.

  When we knew we were going to pull an all-nighter we ordered food while we still had the chance. Even Soho shuts eventually. Then we all called home.

  Scout was long in her bed and Mrs Murphy told me it was no problem, she would sleep on the couch and see me early in the morning.

  I was vaguely aware of the others talking quietly at their workstations. Whitestone Skyping her teenage son. Wren on her phone talking low, I guessed, to her married man. And Gane putting off whoever he was meant to be seeing that night.

  Then their voices faded away, and all I was aware of was the soft Irish voice in my ear, telling me about what Scout had drawn at school, MIR-1 fading away while all I heard was the sound of home.

  But my eyes drifted back to DCI Whitestone and the face of the thin, tousle-haired teenage boy in glasses on the computer screen before her. The son. And while I could not hear what they were saying, somehow I recognised the fierce bond that exists between a lone parent and their child. I saw – or at least I imagined I saw – something that I knew so well, an unbreakable bond of love and blood, the feeling that there is you two and then there is the rest of the world.

  For the very first time, I looked at my boss, that quiet, unassuming woman in glasses with ten years in Homicide and Serious Crime Command and a kid at home, and I believed that I saw myself.

  All night long we looked at the black-and-white images of the ANPRs.

  We saw no faces. That’s how people swap points, deny they were at the wheel, pretend they were home in bed, allege that the missus was driving, Your Honour.

  Because it’s the plate the ANPRs clock.

  I sat at Gane’s workstation as he scrolled through the still images of the camera on the hill, of the traffic in the summer sunshine, crawling to the top of London. We worked in silence, my nerves rattling with too many triple espressos from Bar Italia. When I finally spoke the sun was high over the rooftops of Mayfair and my voice was hoarse with the long slog of the night.

  ‘Stop,’ I said.

  A white open-top pickup truck was struggling up the hill.

  A distinctive car. A Ford Mustang. You could not see what they were carrying in the back and you could not see the driver. But you could see the words sharp and clear printed in black on the doors.

  Premium Blacktop.

  I looked over at Billy Greene.

  ‘Premium Blacktop, Billy?’ I gave him a car registration and the make.

  ‘Wouldn’t they have a concrete mixer?’ Gane said. ‘Steamroller? Heavier kit?’

  ‘You would think so. But the ANPR wouldn’t have kept this image if they were kosher.’

  Billy Greene swivelled in his chair.

  ‘That vehicle had no MOT – that’s why it’s still on the database. Premium Blacktop has no website, no Facebook page, no Twitter account. No digital presence at all, as far as I can see. They’re a firm from Essex registered at Oak Hill Farm. Managing director is a Mr Sean Nawkins.’

  Billy hesitated now, choosing his words carefully. We can’t just say what we like these days. It’s not allowed.

  ‘Travelling people,’ Billy said.

  14

  Sixty minutes later I turned the BMW X5 off the A127 at Gallows Corner and there was Oak Hill Farm waiting in the distance, the white caravans parked back to back on the perimeter, making the camp look like a wagon train waiting for the Apache.

  ‘I’d feel better with the heavy mob,’ DI Gane said.

  It was just the four of us in the car. Me at the wheel with Whitestone in the passenger seat, Gane and Wren in the back. Just our MIT.

  ‘No hats and bats,’ Whitestone said. ‘No ghosties. Not for a chat.’

  Hats and bats are officers in helmets with riot sticks. Ghosties are officers with a steel battering ram – the ghostbusters.

  We were silent as we approached the camp. Ragged flags flew high above the scaffolding that served for the gateway. NO ETHNIC CLEANSING, said the signs, and WE WON’T GO, and THIS IS OUR HOME.

  Then we were inside that place of rural squalor and suburban gentility, the neat little chalets at odds with the fridges and washing machines with the doors pulled off, the busted TVs and ancient computers with their shattered screens.

  I slowed the car, careful among the children and dogs that milled around. A fifteen-year-old girl emerged from the pack.

  ‘Hello, Echo,’ I said. ‘No school on a weekday?’

  ‘Is it a week day?’ she said.

  ‘Is your dad home?’

  She looked over my shoulder at Gane in the back.

  ‘He shouldn’t have come back here,’ she said. ‘None of you should have come back.’

  With an escort of children and dogs, I slowly drove to where the large chalet and the caravan stood side by side. Sean Nawkins was sitting outside his chalet, and he frowned at us from behind his spectacles. He put down his Guardian and stood up, jabbing a finger at Gane as we got out of the car.

  ‘I’m talking to my lawyer about you,’ he said.

  The caravan still had a broken window where Gane had put rat-face through it.

  ‘DI Gane,’ Whitestone said. ‘Have a look for that car, would you? Go with him, DC Wren. Mr Nawkins?’ Whitestone had her warrant card in her hand. ‘I’m DCI Whitestone. I believe you’ve met DC Wolfe.’

  The crowd parted for Gane and Wren. Echo appeared by her father’s side, slipping her arm through his, and I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to restrain him or seeking protection.

  ‘Do you know what they did to my brother?’ Nawkins asked Whitestone. ‘Those farmers? They stripped him naked and held him down and they were going to cut his nuts off. They weren’t just trying to scare him. The father wasn’t man enough to take him alone, so they did it mob-handed. I’m glad he killed them. They deserved to be killed. And it has nothing to do with anything else, all right?’

  ‘Do you own a Ford Mustang pickup truck, Mr Nawkins?’ Whitestone said. She consulted her notes and read out a registration number. Then she stared at him and waited.

  ‘I own a lot of cars,’ Nawkins said. ‘A Ford Mustang, you say? I’ve owned a few of those. Good for building work. You know – laying the black stuff.’

  ‘Did you lay any of the black stuff in North London? Highgate way?’

  ‘Plenty,’ he said, and his face twisted in a sneer. ‘What’s this? You’re going to stitch up my brother just because I did some work in The Garden? That was six months ago!’

  Peter Nawkins appeared in the doorway of the caravan. He looked at his brother.

  ‘They came back!’ he said to his brother. You said they wouldn’t come back any more! And they have!’

  The dogs and children were now being joined by adults. A dozen men and women, watching us, their arms folded, talking among themselves, and then twenty, and then more than I could count, coming out of their neat chalets and the white caravans, and among them I saw the large bearded man and rat-face, his forehead still bandaged from when Gane pushed it through a window.

  ‘So you don’t deny you did work at the Woods’ home in The Garden?’ Whitestone said.

  Nawkins laughed. ‘Why should I deny it? I didn’t even meet them. I spoke to him – the man of the house – on the blower and the housekeeper – some kind of
Eastern European who had an envelope with the cash – plus a little drink for a job well done.’ He laughed with real amusement. ‘You really going to try to parlay that into a murder charge, are you?’

  Whitestone looked at me. I was looking at the crowd.

  ‘We’re here because a vehicle from Oak Hill Farm was at The Garden,’ Whitestone said. ‘And we need to eliminate the owner of that vehicle from our enquiries.’

  ‘That’s me, all right? Christ – we were up there half a year before they were topped! Is that really the best you can do?’

  Laughter in the crowd. That’s OK, I thought. When they are laughing they are less likely to rip your throat out. But I saw Whitestone’s face flush red and I watched her mouth tighten. One fingertip pushed her glasses up her nose. It was amazing how much emotion she could put into that gesture.

  She looked hard at Peter Nawkins.

  ‘Where were you on New Year’s Eve?’ she asked.

  ‘Your coppers asked him that already,’ said Echo.

  ‘I believe they asked about the other Mr Nawkins,’ Whitestone said, not looking at the girl. ‘Now I’m asking this Mr Nawkins. And he still hasn’t given me a satisfactory reply.’

  ‘We’ve done this already,’ Sean Nawkins said. ‘And we’re not doing it again. Knock on somebody else’s door. I was away on business on New Year’s Eve. In Ireland. I can get you as many witnesses as you need. My brother was right here. Like it or lump it, lady. Either way, you can sling your hook. Go inside,’ he said to his brother. ‘Go inside and calm yourself down.’

  Peter Nawkins went into his caravan. Whitestone gave me the nod and I followed him.

  Inside it was like being on a boat. Every inch had been utilised as if there were many miles to travel. I found him leaning against the sink in the kitchen, his huge shoulders juddering with fear.

  ‘You want to put me away!’ he said.

  ‘Not if you haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘But you do! You want to lock me up so you can say you solved it! You have to lock someone up or you’ll get in trouble! And it’s easy to lock me up because of what I did all those years ago.’ He looked at me with fierce eyes. ‘That’s the way it works, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘It has worked that way sometimes in the past. Innocent people got locked up – for bombings, for murders – because somebody had to get locked up. But that’s not happening here. That’s not happening now. You don’t have anything to fear if you haven’t done anything wrong. But you have to help us. There’s a boy missing. There’s a family dead.’

  ‘I’m ill.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ve got the cancer. The kind you can’t cure.’

  ‘And I’m sorry.’

  He nodded, apparently satisfied. I could hear the voices of the crowd outside. I glanced at the window but I could see nothing. I didn’t like leaving Whitestone alone.

  ‘You understand why we’re here, don’t you?’ I said. ‘You know what happened to that family? They died the same way Farmer Burns and his three sons died. With a cattle gun. And you killed those four men, didn’t you?’

  ‘Because they were going to cut me up!’

  I took a step towards him.

  ‘Is Premium Blacktop your brother’s firm?’

  A pause. Then Peter Nawkins nodded.

  ‘You help him?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Were you with him last summer at The Garden?’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t meet that family. None of us did. You know that, don’t you?’

  I stared at him for a moment and then I nodded once.

  It was true what his brother had said.

  We were getting desperate.

  Peter Nawkins turned away and went into his bedroom. Ahead of me I could see a large bed occupying most of the floor space in the small room. He threw himself on the bed and filled it entirely, his massive limbs spilling over the side.

  I stepped into the room and stood by his bedside, staring down at him.

  Then I followed his gaze and looked up at the ceiling.

  And the same woman’s face smiled back at me a thousand times.

  Pictures of Mary Wood covered the ceiling of his bedroom.

  They had been printed off the Internet and most of them seemed to feature Mary as a much younger woman during the winter of her fame.

  Mary in her ski gear. Mary smiling in in Lillehammer. Mary troubled and thoughtful in her Team GB tracksuit as she faced the press. And Mary smiling on the arm of her future husband, although some careful scissor work had removed Brad Wood from the picture.

  I found that I wasn’t breathing.

  ‘Peter?’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What the hell happened at The Garden?’

  His eyes were closed now, as if he refused to look at the dead woman staring down at him while I was looking at her. As if he did not want to share Mary Wood with anyone.

  ‘Nothing happened,’ he said. ‘I just liked her, that’s all. I liked the way she looked. She looked kind. She looked like a kind lady. Didn’t you ever like someone you never met?’

  ‘You met her at The Garden, didn’t you? Stop lying to me!’

  ‘I didn’t meet her! I didn’t speak to her. I could never speak to a lady like that. But I saw her.’ He opened his eyes and looked at me. ‘You can’t imagine how perfect she looked.’

  Then I was in the doorway of the caravan, and I was breathing again, and the crowd was by now a hundred strong, maybe more. Whitestone was listening to Nawkins lecture her about police brutality and human rights.

  There was no sign of Gane and Wren.

  ‘You need to see this, boss,’ I said.

  Whitestone came into the caravan and followed me into the bedroom where Peter Nawkins was still lying on his bed. Then she followed my eyes to the ceiling. She stared at the pictures for a long time and then at the big man sprawled across the bed.

  ‘Where’s Gane and Wren?’ she said.

  There was a black nylon pouch on Whitestone’s belt and she opened it without a sound and took out a pair of ASP handcuffs, black and steel, chain-linked.

  I went to the window. All I could see was the crowd.

  ‘They can’t be far,’ I said.

  She nodded and I knew exactly what she was going to do now because they hammer it into us in our training days. A formal arrest will always be accompanied by physically taking control. You don’t nick someone when they still have the option of running away.

  ‘Peter Nawkins, you are under arrest for the murder of Mary Wood,’ Whitestone said calmly.

  Nawkins opened his eyes and sat up.

  ‘What?’ he said, but by then the ASP cuffs had already secured his hands behind his back. We gently helped the big man to his feet. He stared at us with wild eyes, as if his worst nightmare was coming true.

  ‘You do not have to say anything,’ Whitestone said.

  I could hear jeers and catcalls outside and I guessed that Gane and Wren were returning.

  ‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court,’ Whitestone continued. ‘Anything you do say may be given in evidence. OK, let’s go.’

  I went first.

  When I got to the doorway of the caravan I saw Gane and Wren in the middle of the crowd, being jostled as they tried to get through. Then Whitestone and Nawkins came out of the caravan behind me and a moan of outrage rose from the crowd. All at once they pushed forward and I saw Wren go down. Someone swung a fist at Gane’s head and he flinched as the blow caught him in the ear.

  But the car was not far. And I had the keys in my hand.

  I was not aware of the bottle being thrown but it suddenly exploded in the middle of Whitestone’s forehead.

  The sound of breaking glass and the sight of livid blood were simultaneous. Whitestone half went down, more from shock than pain – the pain would come much later – and I saw Peter
Nawkins stumble into his brother’s arms.

  The blood sent them wild.

  Suddenly I was fighting for my life, and I understood how you died, how the mob kill you, how that copper had died in Tottenham, how those soldiers had died in Belfast, how the mob can get you down on the pavement and then rip you to pieces.

  I felt a flurry of fists in my face, wildly hitting my neck and my ears and the back of my head as much as my mouth and nose and chin and eyes, and trainers catching me on my shins, my thighs, my buttocks, some of them aiming for my balls and missing, and the faces of the men and the women were so close that I could smell the stink of food and cigarettes on their breath.

  Whitestone called my name for what felt like the last time and I fought my way towards her.

  She was on her knees. Her glasses were hanging from her face. She desperately pushed them back on and they stayed there even as the women around her rained kicks into her small figure, and Whitestone was not reacting, the shock of sudden violence setting in, just touching the wound in the centre of her forehead and marvelling at the amount of blood on her hands.

  Then all at once they were backing off.

  I saw Gane, his nose possibly broken, staggering towards us and Wren, getting to her feet, screaming at the crowd – holding her fist out, pointing something yellow at them, backing them off. The Taser in her hand.

  ‘I’m warning you!’ she said. ‘I’m warning the lot of you!’

  It was a Taser X2, compact and lightweight and canary yellow. For a long moment it seemed to have done the trick.

  Then the bearded man stepped forward. The twin lasers of the X2 were bright red on his filthy vest.

  ‘Yeah, and I’m warning you, none of youse are getting out of here alive, you little whore!’

  Wren shot him with the Taser. The X2 is a double-barrelled Taser, with a backup shot making it harder to miss.

  And she didn’t.

  The bearded man screamed as his muscles contracted with involuntary spasms. Neuromuscular incapacitation, they call it. It really screws you up. He was still on the floor surrounded by his friends as we helped Whitestone into the car.