Thorne presumed it was there for the benefit of those whose narrowboats passed beneath the bridge. Guessed it had also given the kids something nice to look at while they’d been spraying their graffiti tags on every spare inch of wall around it.
‘Well, I’ve had a good chat with your guvnor.’
‘That’s nice,’ Thorne said.
Bannard looked happy. ‘I think we can safely say none of this is gang-related, so I can probably get out of your way now.’
‘Whatever you think.’
‘That’s right. Try not to let on how delighted you are.’
‘Doing you a favour this, I would have thought.’
‘A few less arseholes like Martin Cowans does everyone a favour, don’t you reckon? But I can’t see it doing a lot for my workload, if that’s what you mean.’
Their voices echoed under the bridge. As Bannard spoke, he illustrated his words with elaborate gestures, and Thorne had trouble keeping his eyes off the man’s hands. They were enormous. His own had been virtually lost inside one of Bannard’s when they’d met over the body.
‘Will that be it for the Black Dogs, then?’ Thorne asked.
Bannard shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t think so.’
‘Three of the longest-serving members gone. That must shake things up, surely?’
‘They’ll reorganise, bring other members through the ranks. There’ll be a new leadership sorted by tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Same as happened when Cowans took over from Simon Tipper.’
‘Right.’
They stopped, hearing movement on the far side of the water, stared into one of the pools of shadow opposite, but could see nothing. ‘Who might have wanted Simon Tipper out of the way six years ago?’
Bannard was about to light a cigarette. He stared across at Thorne for a few seconds; sounded almost amused when he finally replied. ‘Tipper was killed by Marcus Brooks, when he caught him turning his house over. That’s what the woman who nicked him told you, right? Lilley?’
‘That’s what she told me.’
Bannard lit his cigarette. ‘Which, as far as I’m aware, is why all this shit’s happening in the first place. Yes?’
‘Hypothetically, then,’ Thorne said. ‘Who would have been happy about it?’
‘Christ, hypothetically it could have been anyone. One of the other biker gangs, most likely. One of his own lot who didn’t think he was getting a fair shake. Someone whose bike he’d borrowed without asking. A bloke whose girlfriend he’d shafted…’
‘The Black Dogs? The other gangs? Many of them have coppers on the payroll?’
Bannard grinned, hissed smoke through his teeth. ‘You doing a spot of DPS work on the side, Inspector?’
Thorne dropped his voice, mock-conspiratorial. ‘Every little helps, doesn’t it?’
‘Listen, all these gangs try to buy themselves an edge,’ Bannard said. ‘Unless they’re stupid, they know it’s a good investment, long term.’ He started to whistle again; louder this time, enjoying the echo. He took two fast drags on his cigarette, then flicked it into the water.
Back at the crime scene, the body was being prepared for removal to the mortuary, and Brigstocke was already talking about how they’d be proceeding, and how quickly, the next morning. They would conduct a house-to-house, early, before any of the residents had left for work. All members of the Black Dogs who may have seen or spoken to the victim would also be interviewed, to piece together a picture of Martin Cowans’ movements. They’d request footage from the two CCTV cameras mounted on lampposts near by.
Thorne listened, and knew it was all a perfectly proper and well-thought-out waste of time.
With what he knew, he considered other things they might do if he had not painted himself, and the whole investigation, into a dark corner. They could try to trace the hooker. It couldn’t be that difficult. She might have spotted something, and was almost certainly the last person, bar Marcus Brooks, to have seen Martin Cowans alive.
But that wouldn’t happen – couldn’t – not while Thorne kept his information to himself.
He kept on telling himself it didn’t matter. They knew who the killer was, after all. The details might matter later, but right now, knowing exactly how Brooks had gone about this latest murder wasn’t likely to help catch him.
‘We’re concentrating on the Premiership this year anyway. Champions League doesn’t matter.’
Thorne turned round. ‘You’re gutted. Admit it.’
‘We’ll put all our effort into stuffing you lot when we come to your place in a fortnight,’ Hendricks said.
They watched as the body was carried past.
‘Time of death would be good,’ Thorne said.
‘I’d like to get naked with Justin Timberlake, but, you know…’
‘Approximately?’
Hendricks watched the stretcher-bearers trying to keep the body level as they struggled up the grass bank. ‘He’d been in the water a good while. Plenty of bloating. Twenty-four hours, I reckon; maybe a bit more.’
‘So, late last night?’
‘Probably some time yesterday evening.’
Thorne knew that the worry had been for himself, for his own career, rather than for the man who had authorised the murders of a young woman and her son. But all the same, he felt the anxiety lift in a rush: Cowans had been dead by the time he’d received the message. There was nothing Thorne could have done to save him.
‘That any use to you?’ Hendricks asked.
‘Yeah, thanks.’ But the relief was short-lived. There had been no pattern to the sending of the messages: Brooks had waited over a week before sending the image of Tucker; but he had sent the picture of Hodson from the hospital moments after he’d killed him; then the clip of Skinner had arrived the day before his murder. Brooks would probably do it differently next time, too, and Thorne knew that he might not be so lucky.
Andy Stone jogged across to join them, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. ‘Well, at least we know Cowans wasn’t killed by a woman,’ he said.
Thorne could see, by Stone’s expression, that it was a set-up. He raised his eyebrows at Hendricks. ‘Yeah, go on then…’
Stone threw it away nicely. ‘Well, when was the last time any woman you know took out a bin-bag?’
It was a good joke, and got an appropriate response. Thorne laughed harder than he might have done normally, seizing on the chance.
It was a straightforward journey back, west to Hanger Lane, straight into town along the A40. He would cut down through Knightsbridge and Belgravia to Louise’s place in Pimlico. With Holland needing to get home to Elephant and Castle, no more than ten minutes further on at this hour, Thorne offered to drop him off first.
The roads were almost deserted and the rain had stopped. Watching for the cameras, easing off when he needed to, Thorne drove quickly past Ealing golf course and the Hoover factory. He turned the radio down, spoke as if it were the middle of a conversation they’d been having. ‘Brooks was just unlucky. He was an ideal candidate when it came to setting someone up for Tipper’s murder. The fall-guy.’
‘For Skinner?’
‘For Skinner, almost certainly, and whoever his mate is: “Jennings” or “Squire”. Why did they want Tipper dead, though?’
‘Maybe they were being paid by another gang. Why bother paying someone to do it, when you’ve got a couple of tame coppers who can get it organised for you?’
Thorne nodded. ‘What if it was the Black Dogs they were working for?’
Holland considered it. ‘Someone in Tipper’s own gang wanted shot of him?’
‘Possibly,’ Thorne said. ‘Or these two coppers just wanted rid of him themselves. Maybe Tipper was getting greedy. Not paying them enough, threatening to expose them or whatever.’
The idea struck a chord with Holland, who turned to face Thorne. ‘The crime report said the place was completely trashed, and Brooks always said that the two coppers had told him to take “paperwork”. If
they were on Tipper’s payroll, maybe there were records of bribes, or photos or something. Stuff they needed back.’ He nodded as though telling himself that he’d had worse ideas.
Thorne saw that it made good sense and said as much to Holland. He pushed the car on past Wormwood Scrubs, brooding on their left, then across the flyover at White City. He veered slightly, to avoid taking the wheels over something wet and flattened in the middle lane. A fox or a cat…
‘What if Skinner was still working for the Black Dogs?’ Holland said.
It was something Thorne had started to wonder himself. If Skinner and his partner had killed Tipper, they might have struck up a new and improved deal with his successor – Martin Cowans. If that was the case, had they known about the plan to exact a terrible revenge on Marcus Brooks? It had been hard to tell much from talking to Skinner because he’d been too busy lying about knowing Marcus Brooks at all.
All the same, Thorne had sensed when they had spoken that Skinner was scared. That Brooks’ name was one he hadn’t thought about in a long time.
When Thorne dropped Holland off, the DS mumbled something about what he’d said in the Burger King at lunchtime; about how he hadn’t meant it to sound so aggressive. Thorne mumbled something back about how it didn’t matter.
It was after three when Thorne arrived at the flat in Pimlico. Louise was dead to the world, but Thorne, despite the hour and the day he’d had, felt strangely wide awake. Louise’s laptop was sitting open on a desk in the corner of the sitting room. He toyed with logging on and playing some poker, but settled in the end for tea and some low-volume Hank Williams. He had brought a selection of CDs across a few weeks before. Williams, Cash and a couple of newer bands. Had lined them up on a separate shelf as a small, alphabetically arranged alternative to the David Gray and Diana Krall in Louise’s collection.
While Hank complained about a world he would never get out of alive, Thorne sat flicking through one of Louise’s magazines. He ran over their conversation in bed the night before. The nervous whispering. He thought about Kitson leaving the pub so that she could say goodnight to her kids, and Brigstocke trying to get three of them ready for school before work every morning, and decided that he was probably not cut out to be a father.
It had been Thorne’s mum who had done the shouting when he’d been a kid. Who’d thrown a hairbrush with painful accuracy when he’d grown too big to chase. As far as he could remember, his father had always been patient, and though he was turning into his old man in all sorts of ways he wasn’t grateful for, Thorne didn’t think he’d inherited the tolerance.
He saw young white boys with bum-fluff, in hoodies and bling, talking like rap stars and swearing at shop assistants. He saw pre-pubescent girls scowling in belly tops. He saw kids dropping litter, and barging onto buses, and talking on their phones in the cinema. And he felt like grabbing the nearest hairbrush.
Definitely not cut out for it…
When his prepay started to beep and buzz on the table, Thorne jumped up and rushed across to grab it before the noise woke Louise.
It was a text message from Marcus Brooks:
if u r awake, maybe u r as messed up as me. or maybe I’m just keeping u busy, in which case, sorry. just think about the overtime though.
Thorne clicked on REPLY. Typed in: I’m here.
Sent the message, and waited.
NINETEEN
Thorne knew that, as far as public perception went, it was all horribly simple. Certainly, for the victims of crime, and for the relatives of the dead, it was cut and dried. If police caught a killer they’d done a good job. If they didn’t, they’d fucked up. But few understood or appreciated the importance of luck.
Good and bad. Blind…
The bad luck you lived with, but the good you grabbed with both hands and tried to hold on to. It had played a major part in putting Sutcliffe away, and Shipman. And when beaming chief constables stood before the cameras and talked about a ‘job well done’, there was every chance they were inwardly thanking God, or whatever came closest, for a healthy portion of good fortune. Were praying for more of the same next time.
Following the discovery of Skinner’s body, the press office had released a story for inclusion in the late edition of Monday’s Standard. It had been deliberately low key: no mad, staring eyes or lurid ‘Cop-killer Sought’ headlines. Just a couple of columns on an inside page: a picture of Marcus Brooks; a few lines explaining that this man, whom police were looking for in connection with an ‘ongoing inquiry’, may well have changed his appearance since the photograph had been taken; the assertion, italicised, that he was considered to be dangerous and must not be approached.
The calls had trickled in over the next two days: names; sightings; at least two people claiming that they were Marcus Brooks. All reports were followed up, with particular attention paid to any sightings in the west London area, and overnight a call had come in that looked very much like a solid lead.
Something to be grabbed with both hands.
The caller worked as a night-shift security guard at the London Ark – the spectacular copper and glass office complex in the centre of Hammersmith. He’d reported that on two separate occasions, coming home from work at just before 6 a.m., he’d seen an individual who might have been the man he’d read about in the Standard article. The man had been going into a house opposite his own. They had even nodded to one another the second time their paths had crossed.
The security guard lived three streets away from one of the confirmed cell-sites.
The house he identified was divided into three flats, and while it was being watched, front and back, the landlord was traced and questioned at his home by Andy Stone and another officer. It quickly emerged that the man who may have been Marcus Brooks was the tenant of the one-bedroom flat on the top floor. He had moved into the flat two weeks before, giving the name Robert Georgiou, and had paid three months’ rent in advance, in cash. When questioned, the landlord told Stone that, yes, thinking about it, he had thought his new tenant was a little odd. ‘Quiet, you know? Intense.’ But the man had said something about being separated from his wife, so the landlord had put it down to that and left him alone.
‘We all need privacy sometimes,’ he had said to Stone.
Not to mention cash, Thorne had thought, when Stone had reported back to him.
They’d set up an observation post in a house opposite at 7 a.m., and watched the flat for four hours. An armed unit had been put on standby near by. Adjacent houses had been evacuated as quickly and discreetly as possible.
With no sign of movement, and reliable intelligence that the man had been seen entering the building just before 6 a.m., the assumption that the target was inside, and probably asleep, became official just before midday.
Brigstocke conferred with his commander, then gave the order to go in.
Kitson leaned a little closer to the twin-CD recorder that was built into the wall of the interview room. There was no need, as the microphones were highly sensitive, but it was an automatic movement; like ducking beneath the blades of a helicopter.
‘Miss Kemal has once again declined the offer of legal representation.’
The young woman sitting in the chair opposite frowned and tugged at her hair. ‘I don’t need anyone, do I? I’m not in any trouble.’ Her voice was soft, with no more than a hint of a London accent.
‘I don’t think so,’ Kitson said.
‘So…’ She shrugged.
‘It’s just procedure, Harika. Not a problem.’
The girl was in her early twenties, an accountancy student at North London University. Kitson could see how attractive she was; could see it in Stone’s reaction when they’d collected her from the foyer of Colindale station. He had not seen her before; had not been present when Harika Kemal had initially been questioned, on the night Deniz Sedat had been stabbed to death. She had not been at her best then, anyway.
She had green eyes with absurdly long lashes, and brown hair s
treaked with honey-coloured highlights. Kitson guessed these were probably not the features Stone had noticed first.
‘We need to know why you called,’ Kitson said.
The girl said nothing.
‘Twice,’ Stone said.
‘Look, we know you’re scared.’ As she spoke, Kitson realised that she was using the same tone she used with her kids when they didn’t want to go to the dentist or revise for an exam. ‘I could hear it in your voice, and I swear we’ll do everything we can to make sure you have nothing to be scared about.’
‘I didn’t call anybody.’
‘Harika, you said you knew who had killed Deniz. We have recordings of those phone calls.’
‘Not from me.’
‘I recognised your voice.’
‘You’ve made a mistake.’
‘We can trace the call,’ Stone said.
Kitson could see the dilemma in the girl’s eyes. Could see she wanted to tell Stone that he was talking rubbish, but was unable to. She had withheld her number on both occasions but dare not admit it. Instead, she dropped her gaze to the tabletop; picked at its edge with a plum-coloured fingernail.
‘We can, if we need to,’ Kitson said. ‘It’s a pain in the arse when a number’s been withheld, and obviously we’d like you to save us the trouble, but we can do it.’
Stone turned on the charm, such as it was. ‘Come on, help us out, Harika. If you know something, if you know who was responsible for killing Deniz, don’t you owe it to him to tell us?’
‘It’s a big deal, I know,’ Kitson said. ‘But there’s no need to be scared. We’ll take care of everything.’
When she finally looked up, the girl’s eyes were wide and wet. ‘I thought I knew something, but I didn’t.’ She managed to produce a wobbly smile. ‘That’s all. Stupid…’
‘Fine, but why don’t you let us check it out?’ Kitson said. ‘If you’re wrong, there’s no harm done, is there?’
Harika shook her head: twisted fingers into her hair.
‘There are two types of people who make these kinds of calls,’ Stone said, suddenly harder. ‘Some people really want to help. They tell us what they know, and if we follow it up and it comes to nothing, it doesn’t matter, because that’s part of the job.’ The girl shook her head, held up a hand. ‘But then there’s always a few who like to mess us about. Who send us in the wrong direction, or make out they know stuff when they don’t, and when you’re trying to catch a murderer that can cost lives. So, I really hope you’re not wasting our time.’
Death Message Page 19