(Jonathan Roper Investigates Boxset

by Michael Leese

  Back in Downing Street Sir Paul thought that while many warnings brought to his door were untrue, some happened. He hoped this wasn’t going to be one of them. Public confidence in the intelligence service was at a low ebb. The last thing they needed was some sort of hand grenade going off; one that might be thrown by someone on their own team. Any suggestion that there might be a spy in the ranks of the spies would be tough to stomach. It would further undermine the morale of some very good people.

  Chapter 23

  “It’s not a question of trust. I’m sure of that. When you look at it carefully, they’re not even saying they don’t agree with you. We’ve got another 48 hours to try and come up with a bit more - and even if we don’t, they still have the option of pressing the button.”

  Roper was clearly doubtful and Hooley was privately sure there was more to the delay than the way it had been sold to them. But he also took the pragmatic view that it was a done deal and they had to get on with it. His principal concern was in helping Roper stay on track and not get distracted.

  “Let’s put any worries to one side for a moment and think about what could be done in the next couple of days”

  “There’s plenty to do, obviously.” The reply was snapped back. It would have been terse from anyone else; from Roper, it was just a statement of fact. Hooley was glad he didn’t take these things to heart. Even his ex-wife, who liked to complain he was emotionally stunted, had acknowledged it was a useful trait for someone in his line of work. She knew, from talking to others, that some police officers brought their work home with them, or drank heavily. Neither option tended to end well.

  He glanced at Roper who had adopted an odd-looking pose, leaning his head back and pinching his nose between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. It made him look like he was avoiding a bad smell. The DCI felt an urge to check his armpits, despite having showered a few hours ago.

  He left Roper to it and quietly re-arranged the documents in front of him, trying, and failing, to find inspiration. While this took very little time at all, Roper never moved a muscle. He started to wonder if the younger man was going into one of his trance-like states. It was something he did when he was absorbing information.

  He picked out a coin from his pocket. Heads he would interrupt; tails he would leave him to it. It came down tails. Now what was he going to do? If in doubt, get the coffee in. Perhaps the aroma of a freshly prepared Americano would get through where all else failed. He set off on what he was thinking of as the jog to the cafe. Nigel nodded at him as he came in.

  “Bit early for lunch. You should have phoned ahead.”

  “No worries, anyway, I’m not here for food, just caffeine. Two cups of your finest Java. Can you make them both Americano and I’ll take two small pots of cold milk on the side.”

  This time there was no quiz as to who they were for as the barista busied himself with the machine and handed over the drinks. After grabbing a carrying tray, the DCI made a slower return; he hadn’t yet mastered the GCHQ trot while fully laden.

  Walking into the cubicle he placed Roper’s drink in front of him, receiving zero response. He matched this with his own brand of indifference, utterly pointless since no one saw. Grunting, he sat down wordlessly and grabbed some document about the US militia groups. He had agreed with Roper that he would float between the three topics rather than risk getting bogged down in one.

  Faced with a delay they had agreed to keep checking. Roper had won over Hooley by assuring him that his help was invaluable and would make it faster to get the truth. The two men were carefully examining all the reports.

  They were no longer looking at them purely from the perspective that they were wrong, instead they were trying to detect how Roper had been drawn into making the wrong conclusions.

  “It’s at the heart of everything,” he told Hooley.

  Kicking off his shoes he placed his feet on the desk and began to read. Twenty minutes later he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as he went over a key point. He sat up and reached for a pad to jot down a note when he noticed Roper looking at him.

  “You’ve been muttering to yourself for the last couple of minutes.”

  Hooley suddenly felt bashful. “I think your way of thinking must be rubbing off on me. Before I say any more let me do a quick Google check.”

  He tapped away and then read the results, nodding to himself as he went on, then he looked up at Roper, tapped his forehead, and said. “The good news is that the little grey cells still seem to be functioning, despite my advancing years, as you keep reminding me.

  “That meeting they had in New York. There was freak weather that disrupted flights in the South, but the East Coast remained clear. I remembered it because my son was due to fly out to Texas but had his flight delayed by a few days because the weather was so bad.

  “Well it seems to me that our ultra-right groups may have had a practical reason for ending up in New York. It may have been the easiest destination for everyone to get to. I think that is even more likely because of the suggestion that groups from the east of the country also attended.

  “It could be they booked a group meeting months ago. Like everyone else they would need to coordinate well in advance. When the weather turned on them it was probably easiest to relocate the meeting.”

  He half-expected Roper to dismiss the idea, or at best put it to one side, but he surprised the DCI with his response.

  “That’s very interesting. It makes me realise I made another mistake. If there were any weather details like that, they should have been in the packet. I never saw anything and didn’t chase it up, which is bad.”

  “Hold on before you kick yourself too hard, there is another way of looking at it,” said Hooley. “You’re already thinking that someone may be interfering with your access to information. Maybe this was held back because they didn’t want you to reach the conclusion I just did. That would fit with you saying it feels like you are being manipulated into seeing some special significance, when it was down to fate.”

  He snapped his fingers as he was hit by a thought.

  “How do they normally send you reports to look at?”

  “A lot comes via the GCHQ intranet; some are printed out and there are hard copies of various reports.”

  “And do you get any sort of warning, or a background briefing? I imagine it must be hard to just pick this stuff up and try and make sense of it without some direction, or the chance to ask questions about where it came from.

  “Speaking as a policeman, the source of the information is always going to be crucial. Is the source someone who has provided reliable information in the past? If the source wants to be anonymous, what are they hiding?”

  Roper responded. “There was a lot of discussion about that with lots of different people. Some of them quite senior, and quite a few analysts, all sorts of people with different ideas. In the end, it was felt it was best for me to get the information unfiltered and as it came in. No briefing and no explanation. Everyone decided that was the best way to work with the Rainbow Spectrum. The idea was to remove any trace of subjectivity and just leave me to deal with hard facts.”

  Hooley was surprised. “That’s quite a big ask. Were you happy with it?”

  Roper looked pensive. “I did worry and said maybe we should start more slowly, give me a chance to settle in, but everyone was keen to push on. They said there was too much going on to take it easy. I went along with it.”

  “I bet you did. And was there any attempt to control the volume of material you were looking at?”

  “I don’t think so. When it was ready to send to me then off it went. Somedays I would get lots of reports and be here all night, other days it would be much quieter.”

  “And what about who sent it to you?

  Roper looked doubtful. “Everyone here is divided into teams, so say you might have many different sections flagging up whatever they thought might be of interest, as soon as they got it.”

&n
bsp; Hooley absorbed this. He could think of a lot of things that might be wrong with that system; mostly about swamping Roper with so much intel that it was little wonder he lost track of where everything came from. It also sounded like far too many people were supplying him material so it would be hard, maybe impossible, to single out an individual.

  Chapter 24

  Mr. Roberts used to like roaming between his three London homes. But now, they had become a cause of concern instead of pleasure. As well as discovering bodies, he could no longer recall purchasing the properties; only the fact that he had the deeds reassuring him they were his.

  This lack of recall, combined with his natural paranoia, made him super-sensitive. From the start his priority was to ensure he never became a familiar a face in any one location. Even in a huge city like London you had to remember that most people stuck to the same patch and visited the same places.

  Today, he was sitting in the tiny living room of a flat not that far from the Houses of Parliament. It amused him to be so close to the seat of political power; although he could never imagine being forced to act like one of the many MPs who turned up to toe the party line. He didn’t need other people to give him orders.

  It particularly amused him that he had been in the flat for the big Royal wedding, when the next in line had married a girl from the Home Counties, albeit one with film star looks. He had grinned at the behaviour of the security teams. Had they known that a dangerous man was a stone’s throw away, there would have been panic attacks. Perhaps they had even carried out background checks on the names of the registered owners of these flats. This one was in the name of Tim Broadbent and Tim himself was the tenant: it wasn’t let out.

  If the time ever came he would have plastic surgery; the surgeon and procedure was already in hand, generous cash deposits keeping the doctor keen. He would dye and restyle his hair, alter the colour of his eyes with contact lenses and wear special shoes that increased his height by almost two inches.

  He felt hungry. Living his life this way meant he also needed to stay on top of mundane issues like food shopping because he wanted to avoid being recognised in local outlets. He endured the boredom of a trip to the suburbs to stockpile essential supplies. No one would notice you bulk buying bacon in a Croydon superstore.

  The contents of his big shops were distributed around the three individual freezers. Today he picked out a shrink-wrapped packet containing three sausages, and a small portion of butter. The sausages were dunked into a bowl of lukewarm water and were soon ready for cooking. Putting a frying pan on the cooker to warm up, he grabbed two slices of frozen, wholemeal, bread and put them in his toaster.

  Not long after that he was taking his first bite of the sandwich, cooked just the way he liked it and slathered in brown sauce. The strong taste made his mouth pucker slightly but he loved the sensation and carefully ate his way through the rest of his meal. It would, most likely, be the only thing he ate that day. If he felt hungry again he would just ignore it. He finished his meal with a cup of strong, black, instant coffee and two heaped spoons of sugar. He never bothered with milk.

  He pulled up his laptop and searched various news feeds to see if anyone was carrying information about the bodies he had left in Dulwich. So far there was nothing, which surprised him, but he assumed the police must have some sort of reason for not publicising them. He was trying to work out what that might be when he realised he was guilty of overthinking things. The sitting Prime Minister had announced a general election, the second in 18 months - that was the big story of the day.

  But as he sat in his small one-bedroomed flat, he again experienced an unusual feeling. He had the impression he had forgotten something. He had no idea what it was, only that there had been something he knew about and then it was gone. To try and unravel this mystery he was minutely deconstructing what he had done over the last two days. It didn’t take him long and it didn’t help him find any answers. This led to another unwelcome intrusion: he was worried. Normally he would have congratulated himself that every move he took was minutely planned. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  It felt like there were a series of black holes in his mind where memories had melted away, leaving no trace of what used to be there. He wasn’t even sure when this had started happening but could, at least, pinpoint when he had become aware of it. Ignoring his situation regarding the flats was one thing; finding those two in one of the flats was a nightmare.

  It wasn’t that he worried about killing them. He was indifferent to their fate. If he’d thought they would cause him no trouble, he might have let them go. Well, maybe. He enjoyed the professionalism called for in killing people; it gave him a sense of purpose.

  But with all this confusion a worrying thought emerged. He couldn’t help wondering if some sort of dementia was happening. Had he been a normal person he would have gone to a doctor, but that was out of the question. How could he possibly explain it? “Sorry, doctor, I killed two people and the thing that is bothering me is not the murdering; it’s because I don’t remember kidnapping them in the first place.”

  He sighed. There was only one thing he could do. Forget about it. Which was not a joke but was quite funny. He was forgetting to forget. The truth was he did not have much time to invest in self-indulgent retrospection. He had the sense that events were in motion and trying to stop them would have unforeseen consequences. Not good ones.

  Chapter 25

  “It was a drug overdose, or perhaps I should say poisoning, that did for our two victims.” DI Cleverly had walked round to Julie Mayweather’s office with a copy of the initial autopsy details held in his hands. He passed it over as he added. “The doctor says it was a mix of roofies and Special K. Lots and lots of it. The combination slowed down their respiration to the point where they effectively suffocated. Very hard to say at this point if they suffered; there may be some markers in the blood tests but we haven’t got those yet - but I wouldn’t want to go out that way.”

  The policewoman flinched slightly. For some reason, she found drug related deaths especially hard to deal with and had done ever since her days as a rookie. Just a few weeks after starting she had been selected to work alongside a more experienced officer as they checked a report that a heroin user had overdosed.

  When they had broken into the stinking bedsit the druggie called home, they had also found the body of a tiny, emaciated, three-week-old baby. Time had eventually dimmed the memory of the infant lying there, but the anger never left.

  Her fists clenched and unclenched as she said. “To think some clowns refer to those two as party drugs. What sort of party is it where you take stuff that will kill you?”

  The DI shared her dislike of drugs and the all the problems associated with them. “I’m going to talk to the drugs squad but I did a bit of online research and people do talk about taking this combination, although I think it is quite unusual.”

  His own kids were very young but he had started getting nightmares about the day they were old enough to be introduced to the drug scene. He shook himself. “As I say, I need to get a more solid take on it. I’ve put in a request for a briefing and someone is going to get back to me today, I hope.”

  He glanced down at his own notes. He’d already passed the report on to his boss but he knew she always liked a verbal report on the key points of interest.

  “The doc reckons they were both in a weakened state, partly from being kept in restraints and partly through not really having enough decent food or water. Not enough to kill them outright, but just enough to magnify the effects of the drugs. Again, the doctor is being cautious until the bloods come back, but her guess, maybe her hope, is that they would have been deeply unconscious and known little about it.”

  “But it’s cold comfort to think they may not have suffered. What I don’t understand is why our man spared us the really nasty stuff this time?”

  He checked to see she was happy to pursue this line and from her expression knew he should carry on. �
�I think it is worrying that we have a serial killer who is behaving differently with different victims. I thought they were supposed to keep to the same sort of MO. I’m sure I’ve been told that they like to have a signature statement, or leave their calling card. That is what I thought the face removal was all about.”

  He was pleased to hear his boss share his concerns. “I don’t think you are getting ahead of yourself. It defies belief to think that we are dealing with random events: one killer for the first two and a brand-new killer for the latest pair. I agree with you about serial killers and doing the same thing. That’s what we have always been told. I suppose we have to consider the outside possibility that it is two people operating as a team.

  The DI let this thought run for a moment. In this job, you had to try and imagine a variety of possibilities; even if only to rule things out.

  He said. “Is it beyond the pale to think there might be a man and woman? The bloke does the slicing and dicing and his lady friend is a poisoner. Or am I being sexist? Anyway, we’ve got no evidence that two people are involved.”

  Mayweather sat up, clearly having made her mind up about something. “You may be right about a male and female team, but as you say, we only have physical evidence of one person being at both sites.

  “We need to get a break on this case. Why don’t we get the press team to put out a big number on the drug deaths? The Press is already going mad about both of them. They love it that Sandra Hall is so pretty and Peter Knight is some sort of genius geek.

  “If the press team let it be known we are speculating a woman might be the poisoner then the media will probably go mad. I hate playing these sorts of games but we need to focus as much attention on this as we can. The killer’s been out there for a while and seems to be several steps ahead of us. Who knows? Maybe there is a woman involved.”