Catalyst

by Michael Knaggs

  The stranger stood motionless for a long time watching his suffering before walking across to him.

  “Does that hurt a bit, Jimmy? Don’t worry, it won’t be for long. I just wanted to make sure that you had a minute or two to think about what’s going to happen to you. It doesn’t do to rush these things.” His tone had hardened and the real obsessive hatred came through in his voice. He put his gun back into his belt then took a pair of surgical gloves from a pocket in his jacket and pulled them on.

  “I guess you won’t be needing the money for Kev’s shirt and the drinks after all. I’ll take it back now, if you don’t mind; I’ve got no stomach for robbing a corpse.”

  He crouched down beside Jimmy, who had raised himself up on one elbow and was clutching his injured leg with his other hand and crying uncontrollably. Reaching inside Jimmy’s jacket he pulled out a wad of bank notes from the inside pocket. Silently, he counted out ten twenty-pound notes and pushed the rest back into the same pocket. Then, taking his time, he counted them again, out loud this time as if to show that he had only taken back the amount he was entitled to.

  Finally he stood up, taking out the gun again. Leaning forward, he placed the muzzle against Jimmy’s forehead.

  “Time’s up, Jimmy. This is for your neighbours hiding behind their curtains, for the guys you injured tonight and other nights, and for the misery and pain you’ve inflicted on hundreds of nice people. Oh yes, and for the lady I told you about. I don’t think I mentioned it before, but the third time she tried to take her own life, she succeeded.

  “Go straight to hell, you evil bastard!”

  He pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 3

  At the end of the eighth fruitless day since the killings, Detective Chief Inspector David Gerrard finished reading the final offering, closed the file on his PC and leant back in his chair. His Detective Sergeant, who had supervised the latest information search over the past two days, had been sitting across the desk from him for around two hours as he read through them. DS Joannita Cottrell was thirty-one years old, just under five-and-a-half feet tall and ‘three-quarters West Indian’, as she described herself – her maternal grandfather was white. Her long black curls with their auburn highlights were pulled back in a ponytail. She was slim without being slender, with an attractive rounded figure and large dark eyes set in a disarmingly pretty face, which for most of the time displayed a friendly smile. However, this was not her preferred way of spending a Sunday evening and the smile had long since been replaced by a mask of boredom.

  “That’s – what – seventeen in all out of how many checked?” said David, at last.

  “Five hundred and thirty-five,” she said, grateful for an end to the silence.

  “Covering a period of… ?”

  “Twenty-six weeks.”

  “And that’s every complaint and call-out we’ve had on the estate during that time?”

  “That’s right, sir. Three a day on average. Oh, and none at all since the killings. When we do find this guy, perhaps we should give him a list of our most wanted and let him get on with it.”

  David snorted a laugh. “Hold that thought, Jo. Well, nothing hits the spot from that lot. There are a couple we could follow up, just so we can tell the press and the boss we have ‘new lines of investigation’. But, gut-feel, I don’t think so.”

  “There were others involving the Bradys which we discounted,” she said. “Would you like to see them?”

  “Why aren’t they with these?”

  “Because we didn’t think – I didn’t think – they would lead us anywhere.”

  “Then I don’t need to see them,” he said. “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “What now then, sir?”

  “Well, we’ll get Mutt’n’Geoff to follow these two up,” he said, reaching over to the printer where he had run off a dozen or so sheets of information. He shuffled through the papers, separating them into two piles and putting each into a plastic wallet folder. “Give them one each,” he said, passing them to the Detective Sergeant. “It doesn’t matter who gets which. And make sure they don’t spend too much time on them.”

  “And then?”

  “I think tomorrow after the meeting you and I will have another stroll round the estate, just to take the air and join in the carnival.”

  In his office in the Norman Shaw Building at 8.30 am on Monday morning, the Leader of the Opposition was leaning back in the leather tilt-and-swivel behind his vast walnut desk. The office was large and expensively appointed with a rich long-pile carpet and matching walnut cabinets and console tables. The two seats facing his desk across from him were ornate wing chairs, luxuriously upholstered.

  Andrew Donald himself was a large man, over six feet tall, and although he was somewhat overweight, he carried the surplus evenly about his body, with no unseemly bulges, front or back. He had a round, rather chubby face and dark hair with a side parting, giving him an old-fashioned schoolboy look. Even so, his appearance was always effortlessly fashionable without surrendering any of the dignity of office. Overall, he looked what he was; an Old Etonian pitching for the job of Prime Minister. Today he was wearing a charcoal grey two-piece suit which the man occupying one of the chairs opposite estimated would have cost him around £2,000.

  “Right, let’s get straight to it, shall we?” said Andrew, in open irritation. He waved his hand over a collection of Sunday newspapers and national dailies in an untidy pile on the desk. “Would you mind explaining to me why you told the press that you think it’s a really good thing that three young men were executed in your constituency?”

  Tom Brown was an inch shorter than Andrew and a completely different build: broad-shouldered and muscular with a narrow waist and hips, he had a natural spring to his step and an athletic fluency to his movements. His ruggedly handsome face was accentuated by a pair of pale blue eyes that could burn or twinkle to order, and had the effect of making him – according to popular female opinion – irresistibly attractive. Right now, they were focused and angry.

  “That is not what I told the press,” he said, “otherwise that’s what they would have printed, wouldn’t they?”

  “Okay, I’m paraphrasing, but… ”

  “No, you’re not,” interrupted Tom. “Paraphrasing is when you state the same message in a another, usually more succinct, way. Not when you invent something completely different that isn’t true.”

  “For God’s sake, Tom! You’re not in the bloody House now! You don’t have to dissect my sentences to discredit what I’m saying. You know very well what I’m getting at. You have been our most forthright champion of law and order up to now, and we have put you up there as our key spokesman on the issue. That’s why we’ve given you a research team and an office manager and skimmed off so much of our short-money for you. I can’t believe you’ve betrayed that investment and positional trust to get a few brownie points with that rabble.”

  “That is completely out of order!” Tom shouted, slamming the flat of his hand on the desk and half rising to his feet. “Don’t you dare talk to me about betrayal! And they are not rabble, they are people! My people!”

  Andrew took the outburst unflinchingly and with mild amusement.

  “My people,” he echoed, with a smirk. “It’s a shame you don’t like them enough to want to live with them, instead of in your walled palace thirty miles away.”

  Tom could feel his face reddening with anger.

  “Now come on, Andrew, I thought we’d drawn a line under that. I spend at least three nights each week at the apartment there, and it couldn’t be more central to the constituency. And I’m there most of every Saturday… ”

  “Yes, but nobody sees you just around and about, do they. They don’t regard you as one of their community; just a do-gooder who pops in occasionally.”

  “What is this about?” Tom shouted. “Why all this again? I suppose you and Isobel can be spotted most weekends queuing at the local butchers! ”

 
Andrew laughed and held up his hands.

  “Okay, Tom, I guess I shouldn’t take your ‘good guy’ image lightly. God knows it’s been a great weapon for the Party. And ‘betrayal’ – wrong word. But let’s calm down, shall we.”

  “Would you like to know what really happened?” said Tom, easing himself back onto the chair. Andrew waved an arm inviting him to continue. “I went to the estate on Friday along with Grace and some of the local Party guys, the objective being to reassure the residents – you know – that this sort of thing couldn’t be allowed to go on, etcetera, etcetera. And it was like a street party; the only thing that was missing was the bunting. It sort of caught us off-guard… ”

  “Don’t you read the papers? The press have been all over the estate since the killings; the dailies have been full of the festival spirit for a week now. That’s another thing; I’m not sure why it took you so long to get round to visiting your people.”

  “Okay, point taken,” said Tom, “in retrospect, perhaps an earlier visit would have been appropriate, and yes, I have read the media accounts of the collective mood in the aftermath. But it was the intensity of the feeling that took us by surprise, and the openness of their apparent joy at the death of these three brothers. They didn’t see the killings as part of the problem; they saw it as part of the solution. There was no way I could simply condemn the act without alienating just about the whole estate.”

  “So what are the lessons you draw from that? Put a sniper on every high-rise in every rough estate? I expect you’re still in touch with some of your soldier friends. It’s only been, what, six years since you were out there killing people yourself.”

  “Look, Andrew,” said Tom, getting angry again. “We are on the same fucking side and want the same fucking thing. And I’ll tell you something – there are a hell of a lot of people out there who’d vote for your sniper scenario. But I prefer to think of that as Plan B. Perhaps when you’re feeling more objective and less cynical, we can discuss Plan A.”

  “Okay, Tom,” said Andrew. “Your point taken.” He checked his watch and stood up to signal that the meeting was over. “I’m just very concerned that whatever you said and whatever the papers printed, the message, as I read it, is that the man who did this was right in taking the law into his own hands and that, in doing so, he did the estate a big favour. Now whether you actually believe that… ”

  “Oh I do,” Tom interrupted, “well the second bit anyway. He did do the estate a big favour. He just about set them all free.”

  Andrew stood motionless for a few moments, looking at his colleague with a quizzical frown and absorbing his words.

  “Okay,” he said, finally, “let’s pick up Plan A tomorrow.”

  The Major Incident Team room on the ground floor at Parkside was unremarkable in almost all aspects. One wall was completely covered floor-to-ceiling with white matt-finish panels that served as write-on boards, magnetic display boards and projection screens. The room contained twenty work stations arranged in groups of five for the four teams of detectives working there, and there were four doors leading off it down one side. Two of these opened onto small meeting rooms and a third led to the Detective Inspector’s office, currently unoccupied due to its normal resident being on maternity leave. The fourth door represented the single exception from the norm; it gave access to the office of Detective Chief Inspector David Gerrard. Someone of David’s rank would usually occupy an office ‘upstairs’ with the Senior Leadership Team, but at the time of his promotion he had managed to pull a few strings in order to remain with the ‘ground forces’, as he called them.

  At 9.00 am prompt, he pulled on his suit jacket and emerged from the office, briefly filling the doorway as he passed through it. David Gerrard was huge – a colossus. He stood six feet five inches tall in his bare feet, and weighed in at a shade over eighteen stones – or 1.96 metres and 115 kilograms, as his official record stated. A former Saracens and England Saxons flanker, his career as a full-time professional had been cut short by recurring back and hip problems, but he had since worked hard – and successfully – to retain his physique and fitness. His craggy face was round and full and friendly – some said too friendly for a senior police officer, although his fearsome bulk more than made up for it. Now in his fifty-third year, his slightly receding dark brown hair showed only the faintest traces of grey.

  As always, the group became instantly silent as he entered the room. He moved over to the large map of the estate and its immediate surroundings which spanned two A1 size sheets of fibre-board resting side-by-side on a pair of easels in front of the white-panelled wall. To the right of it, an image thrown onto the wall from the ceiling mounted Lite-Pro projector showed a blank background with a number of icons round the edges. To the left of the map were pinned photographs of the three brothers and around a dozen images from the scene of the killings. David turned to face the group, which comprised two of the four detective teams.

  “Right,” he said, “before we move on, let’s recap on what we’ve done so far. In the absence of any progress at all in finding this guy, it might be therapeutic to remind ourselves that we’ve been working bloody hard all the same. Catherine, tell us what we know about motive.”

  He addressed DC Catherine Baxter.

  “Almost certainly a revenge killing, sir. Could be personal or contract, related to drugs, protection or social disorder activities – and, just possibly, sectarian.”

  David nodded, appreciatively. “Thank you, Catherine. Very snappy – you’ve set the standard. Omar, rationale for drug-related?”

  DC Shakhir responded. “None really, sir. Doesn’t fit the normal pattern for a gang reprisal. Contract killings are very rare. The Bradys would probably have recognised the guy if he’d been from a rival group and he would most likely have shot them there and then.”

  “Okay, thanks. Siobhan, what about protection?”

  “Also unlikely, sir.” DC Wheeler had been seated and stood up to give her reply. “It’s hard to believe any of the major chains would risk hiring a contract killer – it sort of goes against their corporate charters and mission statements – and the smaller outlets just couldn’t afford it. So we reckon that’s a ‘no’.”

  “Good enough. Geoff. Sectarian?”

  “Man had a Northern Irish accent,” DC Drury answered, “and Brady clan used to live in Donegal. But no history of sectarian involvement and family relocated to London during the Troubles, long before Jimmy and the twins were born. So that’s a ‘no’ as well, sir.”

  “Which leaves – DC Cottrell?”

  “Possible link to street violence and intimidation. On the night of the killings, the man was observed at the scene of the disturbance watching the Bradys. Less than half an hour later the killer entered the Wild Boar and – it seems certain now – deliberately singled them out.”

  “You said ‘killer’, Detective Sergeant. Just for once, you’re allowed to state the bleeding obvious. Why do we believe the man in the pub is the killer?”

  Jo looked surprised at the question.

  “Well, sir, he was seen by about thirty kids alone with the Bradys in the cul-de-sac where they were found dead.”

  “Okay… ”

  “And,” she went on, “the two hundred pounds Jimmy had taken from him in the pub was missing from the body.”

  “Right. Forensic evidence? Robbie?”

  “None, sir,” said DC Burns. “No identifiable prints on the stool or glass in the pub, nothing from Jimmy’s clothing or the other notes in his pocket. Firearm used was 9mm, quite probably a Glock, but the gun’s signature on the bullets can’t be matched to any from other shootings.”

  David nodded and paused for a moment.

  “Okay, thanks everybody; so that’s what we’ve got so far – not exactly sweet FA, but not much more. And without anything else, we still can’t be sure exactly why this man did what he did. And without knowing that, we can’t narrow down the search.”

  He paused to lo
ok round the anxious faces.

  “Now I know a number of you grabbing bastards put in a lot of overtime this weekend.”

  The group relaxed for the moment into a collective smile.

  “Three hundred and thirty-odd records checked – very impressive – but, I’m afraid, nothing to celebrate. Geoff and Murray have got a couple of leads to follow up, but I won’t be asking anyone to hold their breath. So, where do we go from here?”

  He turned to the map which was exhibiting signs of wear, with frayed edges and finger marks all over it, reflecting the amount of attention it had received, being the only material focus of the meetings – and the case – so far. The scene of the disturbance, the location of the Wild Boar Inn and the place where the Bradys died – on the very edge of the area covered – were marked with red circular stickers. Scattered over the rest of the map were a number of smaller green ones, fifteen in all.

  “I know that the initial team visited every house and apartment on the estate during the door-to-doors. I am also aware that some residents were not at home when they called the first time and that they followed up with further visits to talk to them. In fact, I know by that time some of you were involved in follow-up visits.” He pointed to the map. “These green dots represent houses where residents have not yet been spoken to. These are the addresses – DS Cottrell.”