A shout went up from inside, dulled in the echoey space.
The Crime Scene Manager, Geoff Culpepper, emerged several minutes later. The SO6 inspector stepped forward to meet him but Culpepper held up a hand and turned to Fran.
It was not a pleasant space to be in. Bare, dusty bulbs hung from the old iron truss frames, and the corrugated roof looked like asbestos. There were roof lights at regular intervals, but their glass was so dirty that the only direct light came through two that were broken like spotlights, casting both glare and shadow. The bare brickwork walls were filthy with decades of dust and soot.
The place felt musty and unused, but the SOCO team had cordoned off a small white van parked inside and there was a faint smell of bleach. Fran and Williams, in their SOCO-issue suits, boots and gloves, stood where told to stand.
Through the open door the daylight looked bright and cheerful, despite leaden skies. The SO6 inspector stalked back and forth, talking crossly into his phone. Fran smiled to herself. This was MIT jurisdiction for now.
‘Here,’ said Culpepper, showing them an area of floor. Dustless. The smell of bleach was stronger and there was a trail showing where the liquid had run off to the nearby drain. Culpepper’s pointing finger moved from the floor up the nearby wall, also showing signs of rough cleaning. There was a crazed brick, its face split off, about head height.
‘Bullet?’ asked Fran.
Culpepper nodded. ‘Most likely. See the radiating fracture lines. But if it was in there, someone dug it out. No sign of it, I’m afraid.’ He saw Fran’s disappointment and moved on. ‘But here … They had a good go, but getting blood off brickwork is a bastard. And they always underestimate the spread. See …’
Fran could see nothing. Old London stock buff brickwork was uneven in colour and pocked with black burn spots at the best of times. Culpepper wafted a mist over it with a spray can and held up a small UV torch, describing an arc, up and down. ‘Splatter,’ he pronounced. There was no mistaking the pattern.
‘Testable?’
‘Type this afternoon,’ replied Culpepper. ‘DNA … FSS are quoting five days.’
Same old same old, thought Fran. Luckily she knew someone who could get results out of the FSS more quickly. She took in the scene slowly, picturing a bullet passing through someone at head height and burying itself in the wall, the body falling. She looked around, pondering. ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ she asked Williams.
‘If you’re thinking this is where Carlton Savage departed this life.’
She nodded at the van. ‘That’s not his.’
‘I’ll run the licence.’ Williams took out his phone and dialled.
‘You’d best take a look out back too …’ said Culpepper. ‘Stay on the plates.’ He led them across the evenly spaced metal stepping stones through a creaking door in a thin timber and wired-glass partition separating off a rudimentary admin area out the back. The smell of bleach persisted. As well as a couple of desks, most of the area was taken up with the kind of utilitarian metal racking you saw in spare-part depots, littered with empty boxes and discarded, yellowing paperwork. One might easily believe the place hadn’t been used in years, were it not for the treasure trove of items best summarized as portable valuables.
Jewellery boxes emptied of their precious contents, small electricals, wallets and purses, designer shoes and handbags. Most looked low-value, perhaps what was left after the good stuff had been fenced. Nothing obviously identifiable – they clearly weren’t that stupid.
‘Sarge.’ Williams was looking out through the grubby, cracked glass in a time-warped rotten door at the rear.
Fran’s eyes followed his down to the narrow stream flowing fast between the green concrete banks underpinning the rear walls of this building and the back of the one opposite. ‘Want to bet that’s the Quaggy River?’ said Williams.
Fran nodded. Stark would probably know. He’d have memorized the map, synchronized his watch by the sun and secreted a compass where the sun didn’t bear thinking about shining. She tutted crossly, trying to push concern for him aside so she could concentrate.
‘The way the floor’s been scrubbed suggests the body was dragged through and dumped out there,’ commented Culpepper. ‘And then there’s this …’ He crouched on a plate set out next to an ancient wood burning stove. ‘It’s cold,’ he said, carefully opening the door. ‘But someone’s burned something in here recently, and we found this underneath …’ He held out an evidence bag containing a large black glove.
‘Boss!’
They turned to find one of the masked SOCOs approaching holding a battered old tin box. ‘Wedged in behind a loose brick,’ explained the man, laying the tin down and opening it.
Inside was a cloth parcel. There was little mistaking the shape within. He teased it open with tweezers.
Ah, thought Fran, smiling. Maybe they’re stupid after all.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Culpepper, crouching to peer at the revolver. ‘Webley, Mark Four. Don’t see so many of them these days.’
There were two small cardboard boxes with the gun, tattered, old-fashioned print. Bullets. Thirty-eight calibre, two-hundred-grain.
‘We may just have found your murder weapon.’
54
Stark wasn’t sure he should go, but was sure he could not sit around the empty flat. When the morning news wasn’t rehashing the ongoing manhunt for Simon Kirsch it was eulogizing Private Nathan Lovelace. They’d connected the latter to Stark. How nuts would they go once they connected the former too? There was no sign yet of Gwen Maddox’s ‘Personal Piece’, but it was surely only a matter of time.
Knowing she would be about her business early, he’d called Pierson for intel. Such things were confidential, she’d reminded him severely, then called back ten minutes later with what he needed. That was the thing about Major Wendy Pierson; for all her bluster, she knew what mattered.
Taking the cane down from its hook by the door, he’d set off. He might have borrowed a pool car from the station, but not with honesty. Today was a day for cold, hard honesty. The journey by foot, train, tube, train and bus had taken over three hours and given him ample time to think cold, hard thoughts. There was no comfort in them.
The bus deposited him in Wootton Bassett high street well after midday, stiff from sitting and the kicking he’d taken the night before. The bruising was setting in, and his ribs ached and stabbed as he moved. Hairline fractures, bound tight. Penance for his wilful half-truth to Fran. He found his mind lingering on the OxyContin he’d not taken, back in the bathroom cabinet. He should really throw them out. Their reminder of where not to go was only of value if he didn’t go there, and this morning he’d come perilously close. He’d actually taken them out and held them in his hand, for a full minute or so, before putting them back with a snarl.
He leant on his cane and waited. He wore a baseball cap to hide his shaven head and stiches, and gloves and scarf covered the worst of the rest. The sunglasses felt over the top, but it was sunny today and a few punches had made it through. Stark did not want to draw attention to himself. This wasn’t easy; loitering on a sleepy high street while people around you got on with things drew glances. He wasn’t alone, though. He spotted one or two elderly veterans in blazers and regimental ties and berets, tipped off via their own sources.
Fran stamped her feet and took another sip of scalding coffee, praying some might reach her frozen toes as she watched the police dive team impatiently. SOCO had confirmed blood traces on the doorway. But what else had been disposed of this way?
To preserve the crime scene they were accessing the river from the back of an upstream building opposite. This had the added advantage of holding the divers in place on taut steel cables in the moving water. The two burly guys had cheerfully donned their orange and black drysuits and been winched out into the currents of the recent rain surge, and now they sounded like jovially whingeing Darth Vaders through their full-face mask intercoms, complaining about the �
��zero vis’, knacker-shrinking cold and the delights of conducting a blind fingertip search in thick gloves when you can’t feel your numb fingers in the wicked current.
‘They’ll whinge about the pay next,’ the Dive Marshall predicted.
Fran checked her phone. If this turned out to be a waste of precious resources, she was in the shit. A detective sergeant didn’t really have the clout to order this, but Groombridge was busy and Harper hadn’t answered her call.
‘Don’t worry,’ grinned the Marshall, reading her thoughts. ‘If anyone gets shirty I’ll say we had an exercise booked for this morning anyway. Never too far from the truth.’
There came a high-pitched electronic whirr over the radio: the underwater metal detectors the two men were using. ‘Got something, boss …’ One of the divers stood up in the river ten metres or so past the door to the lock-up, the water cutting a wake around his chest as he fought to keep his feet. He held up an orange mesh goody-bag with something colourful inside.
The Marshall and two others winched the diver in and helped him out of the water.
A pair of be-gloved SOCOs opened the lanyard and tipped the goodies out on a pristine tarp, one of the crew photographing everything for the evidence trail.
A plastic bin bag, water running out through several tears.
They peeled open the bag. Inside were a set of keys and the smashed remains of a portable hard drive.
Over two hours a crowd formed around Stark and swelled to hundreds. The old veterans stood chatting in the cold air, their breath catching the low sun, several now holding black-tipped regimental and British Legion standards. The mayor joined them in his ceremonial gold chain. Cameras too. TV and press. Stark kept his cap peak low.
The bell in the small clock tower began a slow-beat chime. All activity on the high street stopped. Customers and shopkeepers alike filed out to join the crowd lining the road. A small boy leant out, peering along the street impatiently before his mother reined him in.
Then, at the far end of the street, a funeral mourner in black top-hat, tails and cane appeared on foot, leading a solitary black hearse with glass sides displaying the coffin draped in the Union flag, followed by an unmarked police four-by-four with blacked-out windows and a patrol car.
The hearse was on its way from RAF Lyneham, where its cargo had just been repatriated from Helmand, to the John Radcliffe Hospital and the Oxfordshire city coroner. The forty-six mile route took them through Wootton Bassett. The mayor and local members of the Royal British Legion had started standing by as a mark of respect and it had snowballed from there. Now half the town turned out each time, and visitors, answering the tolling of the bell.
The cortège crawled up the street to whispered quiet, and a soft ripple of applause.
Across the street a woman burst into tears, Lovelace’s mother. And another, younger, the fiancée Pierson had told Stark about, comforted by family and friends. Opposite, representatives from the regiment called to attention and saluted. Among the crowd, those that had served did likewise.
The little boy waved a small plastic Union flag with uncertain aplomb.
Stark removed his shades and cap and pulled on his beret, regimental badge gleaming, and saluted the passing of a comrade. It was only much later after their brief service together that Stark even learned his first name, but a comrade all the same.
Corporal Nathan Lovelace, survivor of the deadly day that saw Stark honoured with the VC he now wore under his jacket, killed on his second tour trying to rescue injured comrades as he had once watched Stark do. Stark shouldn’t feel responsibility for this. In such moments each does what he or she thinks right; that’s soldiering. But he did feel it all the same. For Lovelace; for all of them still fighting, still dying.
The standards lowered to horizontal as the hearse drew up and stopped in front of the memorial. Family and friends stepped forward to place flowers on its roof, pausing to look in at the coffin, retreating in tears and hugs. A regimental bugler struck up the Last Post.
Stark had not expected to hear it again so soon.
As the last note faded into the still air, another ripple of applause rose and faded.
The cortège passed.
The bell stopped.
The weeping did not.
Stark changed hats again and waited at the bus stop as the crowd broke up, watching the old vets chatting and shaking their heads. One of them looked his way, catching his eye, and nodded, recognizing him for what he was, if not who.
A while later the bus arrived and Stark sat on it with deep relief to be off his feet. He would not attend Lovelace’s funeral, he had no place there, but he had paid his respects at least.
Now it was time to pay the piper.
He pulled out his phone and dialled.
55
‘So …’ Fran pointed to the newest photos. A second board had been ‘borrowed’ from CID and placed next to the first.
‘The lock-up is tucked away on its own. Uniform are canvassing, but so far no reported sightings of anyone coming and going. But here’s the kicker – Land Registry say it belongs to T&C Security Ltd.’
‘Thomas Chase and Clive Tilly’s old company?’ asked Dixon.
‘Now owned outright by Chase Security. It’s where they started up. And someone there used it to register a PO Box to run a fake invoice. And that’s not all … Inside we found a list of addresses; with those crossed off matching burglaries going back three years. A hoard of moody-looking goods, we’re cross-checking against items stolen. Boxes of disposable overalls, disposable overshoes and disposable gloves. Partial prints found on three items so far match Carlton Savage. Blood splatter type O, matches Savage. And Savage is a self-confessed burglar and falsifier of alibis. But if there’s one thing we know for sure, someone else was in that lock-up with him. Some SOCO nerd calculated from the bullet impact height that if Savage was the victim, then the killer was probably between five-foot nine and six-foot one, for what that’s worth.’ Fran’s blood was up. Finally it felt like they were getting somewhere.
‘The van is on fake plates. More fakes found inside. All the VIN numbers removed so we can assume it’s stolen, probably used exclusively for the burglaries. Carlton Savage’s pimped Honda was found two streets away.
‘The wood-burning stove in the lock-up was recently used. SOCO are analysing the contents, but doubt they’ll find much. Handy way of disposing of disposable overalls and gloves, et cetera. Not to mention identifiable goods. But whoever did got careless.’ She pointed to the photo of the black glove. ‘Size large. Same brand issued to Chase Security staff. Gunshot residue confirmed. Sent to lab for DNA testing – should be plenty of hand sweat.’
‘Anyone willing to bet against Simon Kirsch?’ said Harper darkly. The edge in his voice said he was still hissy at not being in on the find, but if he wanted to waste time playing the big man at Scotland Yard, then too bad.
‘I’ve asked my contact in Forensics to lean on the testing team.’ Fran pointed to the next photo. ‘Ballistics have confirmed the weapon recovered was a Webley – Mark Four, loaded with the same thirty-eight-calibre, two-hundred-grain, wartime bullets that killed Thomas and Mary Chase. Bullet comparison shouldn’t take long. The serial number’s been filed off the gun. Geeks have techniques but even if they recover it, this mark was manufactured for British and Commonwealth forces from 1932 to 1963, approximately half a million made and the CSM said they can be hard to trace.’
‘Thomas Chase had an old revolver, his grandfather’s,’ said Dixon.
‘Yes.’ Fran nodded. ‘If only there was someone here with army connections to help check …’
Harper ignored the jibe, but she shouldn’t push her luck. ‘What about the keys?’
‘Confirmed as copies of the Chases’ house keys.’
Harper nodded. ‘Easy enough for a trusted employee to snaffle.’
‘The killer just let themself in,’ said Williams.
‘Looks like …’ agreed Fran. Stark
would be looking insufferably un-smug if he was here. He never had believed in a break-in. ‘And then there’s this …’ She pointed at the last photo – the smashed computer hard drive. ‘Size and make match the empty cases found near the Chases’ safe and later in their garage, but I’m willing to bet this one was from the safe. Forensics aren’t very chatty on the chances of retrieving anything from it, but there’s a second one out there somewhere.’
‘And Simon Kirsch, aka Mark White, took it and killed a copper in the process,’ added Harper, as if it needed repeating. ‘Whatever’s on that drive is key to this, and that puts Kirsch slap bang in the frame.’
‘Maybe they were back-ups of each other,’ suggested Williams. ‘The killer needed both to be sure?’
‘Kirsch,’ said Harper firmly. ‘And once he had them he did away with Savage.’
Fran wasn’t certain. ‘Not sure who I’d put as alpha dog.’
‘But Savage was in on it after all,’ said Harper, pleased. ‘He and Kirsch were partners.’
‘There didn’t seem to be much love lost between them,’ said Williams.
‘An act,’ said Harper. ‘Or a falling-out after burglary-gone-bad.’
Fran bit her lip rather than point out that assumptions were dangerous. ‘There’s nothing linking Simon Kirsch to the lock-up.’
‘You haven’t found anything yet, you mean,’ said Harper.
Fran let that go. ‘We should ask Clive Tilly about the place. The Chases were skimming the taxman’s share off the business. Maybe they were part of all this. Maybe he was too. This wasn’t Revenue and Customs exacting revenge. Someone wanted us to think the Chases’ murder was a burglary. There was something on those hard drives someone wished there wasn’t.’
‘Agreed. Simon Kirsch. And the sooner we collar him, the sooner we can bang him up and piss off down the pub.’
Fran rolled her eyes but said nothing. Much as she disliked his bombastic certainty, and everything else about him, he was right about one thing: if they wanted to know what really happened, getting Simon Kirsch safely off the streets would be a fair start. But uniform were getting nowhere. Kirsch had disappeared. If he had one false identity he might have others. A change of appearance and he could be sunning himself in Rio by now.
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 25