Cold Winter's Morning

by Alan Bexley

  They talked as they walked. ‘I haven’t had time to check the statements from anyone else at Goldsmith Court. Did anyone see or hear anything useful?’ he said.

  ‘No strangers were seen around, only residents leaving for work. No one hanging about outside. There are no bus stops on that road. Nowhere that anyone odd wouldn’t have stood out.’

  ‘He could have sat in the car and waited for her to pass. Although it was particularly dark,’ he said, thinking aloud, ‘because it was cloudy, so perhaps he followed her on foot to make sure he had the right woman and then got back into the car.’

  ‘Ingermann would have been noticed. We saw him not long after the incident, unshaven, uncombed hair. Even if he changed clothes, he’s too scruffy to go unnoticed,’ she said.

  ‘I think you’re right. He’s not our driver, but he might have supplied the vehicle. He may not have known what it was to be used for, of course.’

  They walked a few steps silently.

  ‘One thing we need to do soon, is to check Vicky’s apartment to see if the gun’s there,’ he said. ‘It’s odd that Bryony Thorpe didn’t mention it.’

  ‘Maybe she thought that telling us about the knife was enough to alert us. Maybe she thought it might weaken our resolve to find the killer if we thought Vicky was just a gun-toting criminal.’

  Frank gave her a twisted smile.

  ‘You can’t be surprised a witness hasn’t told us the complete truth,’ she continued.

  They reached the CID office and stood in front of Jade’s desk.

  ‘The second vehicle is following his taxi now,’ Jade told them.

  She had a police radio handset on the desk. It crackled into life. ‘One-eight-one from Mike one-three. The taxi has stopped outside the suspect’s residence. The suspect has left the vehicle and is moving at speed to his front door. He’s entering the flat. The taxi’s moving off.’

  Jade acknowledged the call and thanked them.

  ‘He wasn’t daft enough to go anywhere but home,’ Helen said.

  ‘I think he’s the weak link, especially if he was kept in the dark about what his car was to be used for,’ Frank said.

  He looked across at Yalina, ‘Give it an hour and then get me a list of all calls yesterday and today on his landline and mobile.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘There’s no landline and no calls to or from his mobile in the last week.’

  ‘Not even nuisance calls? Does this man have no friends?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Another phone?’

  Frank leaned on his desk and mulled over the entries in his notebook. He glanced up at each of his people as he worked. Could one of them be betraying the team to the Morgans?

  Merk answered the ringing phone. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The police have had George in for questioning,’ said the familiar voice at the other end.

  ‘Don’t panic. George knows nothing so he can’t tell them anything.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘You’ve known me for years, I don’t leave evidence. There’s nothing for them to find. You just need to hold your nerve,’ Merk said.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say but I’m not cold-blooded like you.’

  Merk sighed. ‘Just get off the line and go about your normal business. This really has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘It will have if your actions bring the police to my door. They’re running a murder enquiry. They’ll turn over every rock and I’m known to them.’

  ‘There’s nothing to connect you.’

  Merk terminated the call, threw down the phone and picked up a cigarette lighter. The gas fizzed as Merk held the flame to a cigarette and drew heavily. The tip flared bright red.

  Chapter 9

  They stood outside the entrance to Kensington House with its ornately engraved glass double doors. Helen read the entry code from a disc on the keyring and tugged off a glove to use the keypad, then pulled a door open. The building’s letting agent had provided the keys. She and Frank walked in and waited for a lift to take them to the fourth floor.

  A carpeted hallway led to apartment 403 where PC Liz Barnham sat on a chair. She was pleased to be able to leave and, after an exchange of pleasantries, headed for the lift. Outside the door, they pulled on latex gloves. Helen examined the keys again. ‘There’s an alarm code here. I hope it hasn’t been changed.’

  She turned the key in the lock and opened the door. A two-tone note sounded from a box on the wall just inside the door. Helen pressed the keys, and the sound stopped and an LED changed from red to green.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ she said.

  Inside was expensive flocked wallpaper and, in the room's centre, two enormous sofas. A faint odour of sandalwood came from somewhere. Abstract pictures hung on the wall. Frank inspected one - a series of primary colour blocks. He raised his eyebrows and turned to Helen. She was rifling an antique writing desk. He joined her.

  She was taking care not to touch surfaces where there were likely to be fingerprints.

  Frank opened a door. ‘Kitchen’s through here.’

  There was a short hallway with the kitchen off to the left, accessed through an archway, with a door in the facing wall and one to the right. Frank walked through the kitchen to the window at the end. It looked out onto a balcony. He surveyed the kitchen, fitted with every gadget imaginable. Everything pristine and shiny.

  He returned to the main room. ‘Anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Domestic bills, odds and sods.’

  ‘Where’s this gun? he said.

  He lifted the cushions on the sofas, checked the carpet was fixed down. They pulled the writing desk away from the wall but found nothing.

  ‘Let’s check the bedroom,’ he said.

  The door at the end of the hallway accessed the bedroom. A king size double bed with silver satin sheets and matching pillows dominated the room.

  Helen looked around. ‘I’ll see if I can find a diary,’ she said, sitting at the dressing table.

  ‘Isn’t everything done online these days?’

  ‘Not always. Some people prefer to commit personal thoughts to paper and keep them private.’

  She pulled open the top drawer which contained several coloured vibrators in different sizes and other sex toys.

  Frank looked around at the pale-yellow wallpaper and fitted wardrobe. Another large window let weak sunlight into the room. He checked the bottom of the wardrobe but found only shoes.

  ‘You realise that there’s been plenty of time for someone else to go through everything before we got anyone here? There isn’t much chance we’ll find anything useful,’ Helen was saying. She was pulling the drawers out, checking nothing was taped to them and putting them on the bed.

  ‘Aha’ she said. ‘There’s a safe under here.’

  Frank knelt beside her. Set into the floor was a modern safe with a keypad.

  ‘I don’t suppose that the code for that is on the keyring.’

  ‘Sadly not,’ she said. ‘We’ll need a locksmith.’

  The dressing table moved to one side, they watched as the locksmith attacked the safe with a power drill. It was making a hideous screeching sound, and they stood well back with their ears covered.

  ‘Doesn’t look like a very sophisticated way of opening it,’ Frank yelled.

  The locksmith stopped drilling, cursed and tried a different angle. Gouges and scratches covered the safe door.

  The doorbell rang. Frank and Helen looked at one another.

  ‘I bet that’s a neighbour come to complain about the noise,’ she said with a grin.

  ‘Go and get rid of them,’ he said.

  He watched the locksmith and overheard Helen explaining in a raised voice that they were involved in a murder investigation and ‘No’ they couldn’t do it more quietly.

  After more noisy drilling, the locksmith hammered a chisel and, at last, the door flipped open.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ the locksmith said. He stood up.r />
  Frank knelt to reach inside. He withdrew his hand bringing with it the gun. He held it up by the barrel. Helen opened a plastic evidence bag, and he dropped the weapon into it. She held it up, and they stared at it.

  The locksmith had collected his tools and now lifted his toolbox. He glanced at the handgun. ‘I’ll send a bill through to your station,’ he said, and left.

  ‘Do you know what make it is?’ she said.

  ‘A Glock,’ he said, ‘that’s their trademark. Austrian. Phone for a firearms officer, will you? It’s loaded, and it needs to be made safe before it’s bagged as evidence.’

  She pulled out her phone and made the call. While she was doing this, Frank put the gun on the dressing table and stood staring at it. ‘Why did she think she needed it?’

  ‘They’re on their way,’ Helen told him.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Did you find the diary?’

  ‘I found five but they are exactly that - diaries. I was hoping to find contacts or phone numbers, something like that. No passport either. There’s no laptop or tablet, you notice. No phones. Someone has swept the place.’

  ‘Bag them up and we’ll take them back to the station. We may find something useful in them.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky with the fingerprints,’ she said.

  Frank decided to go and meet with Mr Quinnan at his place of work - the architects Degenhard Design. He’d just left Kensington House with Helen who was reaching for the CD controls when the car’s radio came alive.

  ‘All units, all units from KB, robbery in progress at Boozrite on the corner of Shoreham Street. Repeat, robbery in progress on Shoreham Street. Out.’

  ‘That’s only ‘round the corner,’ Frank said.

  Helen heard two other responses as she picked up the radio microphone and added her own.

  ‘Mike one-three, Mike one-three to KB, Frank and I are responding. ETA five minutes.’

  Frank rushed along Arundel Road, barging his way through the traffic, sharp right into Cloverly Road and right again into Shoreham Road. The off licence was on the junction with the High Street at the far end. A patrol car had arrived before them and parked outside the off licence. A moped was being ridden by two slim men in helmets along the pavement, scattering the shoppers. As Frank slithered to a stop, they rode past the car travelling in the opposite direction, and he lost sight of them for a moment. He spun the wheel and reversed the car to turn and give chase.

  ‘They’ve turned left at the end of the road,’ Helen said.

  ‘OK,’ Frank said, as he completed the manoeuvre and gave chase.

  Helen used the radio. ‘KB, this is Mike one-three, in pursuit of moped fleeing the scene of the robbery at Boozerite in Shoreham Street. Now turning left, left, into Cloverly Street.’

  As Frank turned the corner, he could see the moped a short way ahead, but it was running up the middle of the road passing slow-moving vehicles. Traffic lights ahead had turned red, but the moped only paused before continuing.

  Helen switched on the blue lights concealed in the car’s radiator and windscreen, and set the siren going. The stationary vehicles ahead were slow in moving aside. They were reluctant to mount the pavement to make way even for a police vehicle. The lights changed before he reached them and the cars in the queue started moving. Ahead the moped took a left and disappeared from view.

  He drove up to the turning - Bowers Road - but when they turned in, the moped had vanished. ‘KB from Mike one-three. We have lost sight of the moped which has no licence plates and given up pursuit. Moped last seen turning into Bowers Road, out.’

  The control room acknowledged her message.

  ‘Damn it,’ Frank said. ‘I’ll drive ‘round the block. Let’s see if we can spot it.’

  A message came over the radio, ‘One-seven-eight to Mike one-three, I’m on Shrewsbury Road and the moped has just driven past me heading north.’

  Helen said, ‘Mike one-three to one-seven-eight. All received. Thanks, Malvia.’

  The control room requested other vehicles in the vicinity to come to their assistance as Frank pursued up Shrewsbury Road.

  A car tipped on its springs as it did an emergency stop when the moped pulled across to the wrong side of the road to overtake a car. Helen was continuing to give her commentary, hoping another patrol car would intercept. Another mobile unit said they were five minutes away. The moped drove over a wide pavement to get across into Sherrington Street, startling pedestrians.

  ‘This is getting out of hand,’ Frank said.

  But neither this road nor the only turning off it were through roads so they would have the moped trapped.

  He was gaining on the vehicle as it approached the end of Sherington Street. They were now in the shadow of the eighteen storey Oswell Point. He was only yards from the moped when the driver tried a tight turn and lost control. The bike slid across the road and the riders tumbled off. Frank drove up to the bike and stopped. The two figures in motorcycle suits ran between the graffitied support columns. He saw them pull open a door and enter the block of flats.

  Frank parked with the lights going. He jumped out and ran for the door. It slammed behind him on the return spring and the sound echoed down the hallway. There was not a soul around and the youths had gone to ground. He ran to the next fire door which accessed a stairwell and hauled it open. He could hear music playing and loud voices from a TV set but no running feet.

  Frank returned outside and started back to the car when a movement caught his eye and he jumped to one side. A brick shattered on the ground a yard from him.

  He looked up at the first walkway and saw two young boys’ faces watching him. They were about seven or eight years old and grinning from ear to ear. One threw him a two-fingered salute before they ran off. A marked police car arrived and Frank could see PCs Phil Drake and Richard Tarver inside. They too parked up beside the moped.

  Helen had stayed with the car and Frank raised his hands in a sign of dismay as he walked past to the police car where Phil wound his window down.

  ‘Can you call in and get CSI to organise a van to collect the moped for examination?’ Frank said.

  ‘Sure thing, Sarge,’ Phil said.

  Frank dropped into the driver’s seat of his car. ‘Why do I do this job?’ he asked Helen.

  She snorted and said, ‘The high salary, pleasant working conditions, respect of the public, need I go on?’

  He started the engine and turned in the seat to reverse away. His phone rang, and he stopped.

  ‘Hi, what is it, Jade?’

  He listened and then ended the call. ‘Hell.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Ingermann. A neighbour has called for an ambulance. He’s had the stuffing knocked out of him. Let’s get over to St Margaret’s.’

  Chapter 10

  St Margaret’s Hospital was originally Cloverly House, a Victorian workhouse and infirmary, and the exterior was a depressing grey with rows of small, identical windows. Inside, the hospital trust had been refitting it over the years with the latest facilities and technology. The automatic glass doors opened onto a reception area filled with padded wooden chairs sitting on a carpet tiled floor.

  Frank hurried in and thrust his warrant card in the face of one of the receptionists. ‘George Ingermann, where is he? He was brought in a few minutes ago.’

  The receptionist consulted her screen. ‘He is in the Accident & Emergency Department.’ She pointed, ‘That door over there and follow the signs.’

  With Helen following, he ran through a short corridor and a pair of double doors that led to a large waiting room with rows of occupied seats, and another reception desk. ‘George Ingermann, what’s his condition?’

  The young woman didn’t need to check her computer. ‘He’s being attended to right now.’

  ‘Yes, but what condition is he in?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll get someone to speak to you.’

  Frank stepped away from the de
sk but had no intention of sitting.

  A middle-aged woman in a bright blue uniform approached. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Frank Grey and Helen Walker from Westchapel CID.’ The woman studied their IDs then led them through a door into a small private room.

  ‘Mr Ingermann is in theatre. He slipped into unconsciousness in the ambulance bringing him here. He won’t be fit enough to receive visitors for at least twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I need to speak with him,’ Frank said. ‘He’s an important witness in our investigation of Vicky Crosby’s death.’

  The doctor recognised Vicky’s name, and it showed in her face. ‘I see. But there’s no chance of him talking to you for some time.’

  ‘You’ve no idea how bad that news is,’ Frank said.

  ‘The patient’s wellbeing is our first consideration regardless of what he might have done.’

  Frank threw his head back and sighed.

  Helen said, ‘Thank you for taking the time to speak to us. We appreciate it.’

  Frank nodded.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Helen said, ‘Mr Ingermann will survive?’

  The doctor’s face was expressionless. ‘We can’t be sure at this stage.’

  ‘What are the odds?’ Frank asked.

  ‘I would have to say they are good, but he really has taken a severe beating.’

  Frank stared and then turned to a nearby window which overlooked the car park. ‘Shit,’ he said, as the doctor left them.

  ‘At least it confirms he’s probably involved,’ she said.

  ‘What’s so important that Vicky had to be killed and Ingermann silenced?’

  Helen only shrugged.

  ‘Let’s get over to the architects and see Quinnan,’ he said.

  Ian Quinnan appeared from behind the door bearing his name when summoned by Degenhard Design’s receptionist. He was wearing a three-piece suit and a serious expression.

  ‘Good morning, detectives.’

  The three of them settled into comfortable chairs in his small office. He had a light oak desk with a closed laptop on it and nothing else. The only other item of furniture was a matching wood effect filing cabinet.