Comply or Die

by Tony Hutchinson

  ‘Any of them said anything?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No. Alex and Charlotte were crying. Tracey apparently looked like she was going to batter the arresting officer, and Elliott seemed non-plussed.’

  He handed a mug of tea to Sam.

  ‘Okay then,’ she said, pausing to take a sip. ‘What about that other thing, what you called about last night?’

  ‘Bev’s going to see Eric in about an hour,’ Ed answered. ‘He’s off work today.’

  The HOLMES staff had their heads down, looking at computer screens, reading written documents, but all clearly had their ears tuned into the conversation; they were detectives after all.

  Sam walked out, Ed following. She closed her office door behind them. ‘Anything from the Listeners?’

  ‘Nothing worth mentioning. Eric was terrified.’

  A DC knocked on the door. Sam beckoned him in.

  ‘Thought you’d want to see the Post, boss.’

  ‘Anything in?’

  ‘Page 5,’ the detective told her. ‘Seen better.’

  She took the newspaper and waited until he’d shut the door behind him.

  The front page, written by Darius, was a factual account of yesterday’s press conference. The editorial was on page 5. She pushed her chair out of the way and bent her head towards the page, Ed alongside her.

  Keystone Cops – How many more have to die?

  Eastern Police, like the bumblers from a silent movie, are running around clueless, while a predator preys on the young men of our university community. For months the police have said they died as a result of being drunk and falling into the river. Even after the discovery of a second young man on the tow path yesterday morning with fatal head injuries, DCI Samantha Parker announced ‘there is no necessity to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions and theories’. Her answer – go home via a different route.

  Our response is that we pay the police to ensure our safety, not to suggest no-go areas. Seaton St George is not a war zone, nor is it a repeated target of terrorist activity. If the local police cannot protect us, then I suggest the Chief Constable, his Executive Team, and his Senior Investigating Officers step aside and let someone who knows what they are doing assume command.

  Perhaps it is time we all write to our local MP and suggest the Home Secretary looks at police force mergers again.

  Would anybody really lament the loss of Eastern Police?

  ‘I’d love to have that bastard,’ Sam said, grabbing the paper and flinging it to the floor. ‘Slinging shit from the sidelines.’

  ‘Today’s shit but wrapping tomorrow’s fish and chips,’ Ed pulled a chair from the desk.

  Sam turned and stared out of the window. Deep breaths, count to 10.

  ‘Nothing we can do about it now,’ she turned to Ed as he leaned against the wall. ‘Best way to stick two fingers up is to box this off but come the moment, I’ll have my day with him.’

  Ed had been holding in his smile but now he let it go, not just his mouth but his eyes and his whole face.

  ‘That may come quicker than expected.’

  ‘Brighten my day,’ Sam said.

  ‘He only got locked up last night by traffic,’ Ed grinned. ‘Drink-driving.’

  Her brow concertinaed like an accordion under the deft fingers of a maestro. ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘No,’ Ed went on. ‘Went through a red light. Almost fell out of the car and blew over a hundred on the CAMIC. He’s at court this morning.’

  She raised her arms above her head, looked up at the ceiling. ‘There is a God!’

  ‘Course he’s claiming victimisation,’ Ed said. ‘But it’s not going to get him very far when he’s about three times over the limit. He’d been speaking at some black-tie do... and it gets better.’

  Ed was enjoying himself, grinning so hard it hurt.

  ‘His boss is a tee-totaller high up in the Salvation Army, family tree back to the Temperance League, and our pissed-up editor also had some female company in the car.’

  Sam almost held her breath. ‘Please tell me it wasn’t his wife?’

  ‘‘Chantelle Bellvedaire!’ Ed delivered the name like a stand-up comic hitting the punch line.

  Sam’s eyes were as wide as a kid on Christmas Day. ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘The one and only,’ Ed laughed. ‘Crack addict and street prostitute. He’s hours off getting the sack.’

  Sam was shaking her head and reaching for her Marlboros.

  ‘This calls for a celebratory cigarette,’ she said, making a mental note to have the editor’s court appearance flagged up by the press office. ‘Come on then.’

  Ed asked where they were going.

  ‘I told you, a smoke to celebrate,’ Sam waited for his quizzical look. ‘And I want to revisit Jamie Telford.’

  ‘The reason being?’ Ed asked.

  ‘I want to tell him Elliott Prince’s in custody. Ask him if he thinks Elliott could have been the one who sent him the photograph.’

  Sam glanced at the silver intercom, found the button for 23, and pressed. The buzzer sounded three times. Nothing. She pressed again.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She recognised Jamie’s voice, albeit it had taken on the deep Darth Vader version that spoke of too many cigarettes and too much booze.

  ‘DCI Parker. I need a word. Buzz us in.’ It wasn’t a request.

  The door clicked and Sam pushed it open, walking into a communal hall that was surprisingly tidy considering the three-storey block was populated by students.

  Jamie was at the door to his flat, barefoot, rubbing sleep from his eyes, the rumpled T-shirt and joggers probably hastily dragged on. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘We’ll tell you inside.’

  The small square sitting room had two undersized leather armchairs, the type you’d find in one of those stuffy London gentlemen’s clubs, and a blue beanbag. The huge wall-mounted flat screen TV dominated the room.

  The detectives didn’t bother sitting down.

  It was Sam who spoke. ‘Elliott Prince is in custody on suspicion of murder.’

  ‘What?!’ Jamie flopped into one of the chairs. His hands started to shake.

  ‘Now what I’m interested in is this,’ Sam said. ‘Could he be behind the photograph that was sent to you?’

  ‘Murder?’ Jamie had closed his eyes, fingers running through his hair. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘It’s a simple question, Jamie. Do you think he had anything to do with the photograph?’

  Jamie rubbed his face. ‘No. No, of course not. Why would he?’

  ‘The photographs of the girls, was he up for that?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Well he never said he wasn’t. Look what’s this about? How come you’re asking me if Elliott’s sent the photographs? Who’s he supposed to have murdered?’

  Ed sat on the arm of Jamie’s chair. ‘It’s like this, young man. We’re wondering whether in fact it was Elliott who got you to pose for the photos. When did he join your little group, Mortimers?’

  ‘When he moved in with Jack and Glen,’ Jamie answered slowly. ‘I still can’t believe they’re dead.’

  He covered his face with his hands. ‘Are you saying Elliott killed them? I’m leaving after this term, try to finish the course somewhere else. Either that or start again. I’ve never had a night out since Glen died. Why would Elliott want to get photos of us?’

  Sam glanced at Ed. ‘It is just something we’re exploring. Maybe he wasn’t into the banter like you all were.’

  Jamie reached for the packet of cigarettes on the floor, took one out, and managed to hold the shaking flame of the lighter close enough and long enough for the tobacco to catch. He inhaled. He looked as if he was contemplating an exam question.

  When he spoke, it was slow, deliberate. ‘You know, I’ve never considered it before, but now you come to mention it, when he laughed at the photos of the girls it seemed a bit contrived, a bit put on. Maybe he was testing us? You know, see who enjoyed it the most.
He never tried to put us off taking photographs, but he always tried to find out who wanted to do it the most. And…’ he looked at the floor, his voice dropping in time with his gaze. ‘Jack did have some Rohypnol.’

  Ed walked away from the chair.

  Sam’s spoke with thinly veiled contempt. ‘Jack had Rohypnol?’

  Jamie ran his hands through his hair again. ‘Yeah.’ Tears fell from his eyes. ‘I don’t think he used them.’

  ‘Did Elliott know about them?’

  ‘We all did. Jack was just playing the big man.’

  ‘I thought you said Elliott was the leader?’ Sam pushed him.

  ‘He was. Jack thought he was, but we always went where Elliott said, always drank what Elliott said. But he never ordered us. He was more subtle than that. He’d plant the seed; by the time we’d decided to do it, we would be convinced it was someone else’s idea. It was only afterwards you realised it was down to Elliott. Manipulative, that’s what he was.’

  Macavity, thought Sam.

  The ash hung perilously from the end of his cigarette. Jamie tapped it into the glass ashtray just before gravity did its work. ‘Why didn’t Elliott get a photo? He was always with us…maybe it was him?’

  ‘Do you remember anything about the night you had the photo taken?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Nothing. I can’t even remember which night it was, except sometimes, in my dreams, I see bright colours, shapes, and the feeling someone was stood looking down at me.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  ‘Move it where?’ the voice belonged to Davinder Bhandal. ‘It’s fine where it is.’

  ‘But what if they find it?’ Aisha’s mother said.

  ‘They haven’t found it up to now have they?’ Bhandal said.

  ‘But what if they’re watching us? What if they follow us?’

  The uncle spoke. ‘They’ve found the car. I said we should have burned it.’

  ‘But they don’t know who drove it there, do they?’ Bhandal’s tone a mix of aggression and defence in equal measure. ‘They had Baljit’s fingerprints from it but he’s explained those away. If they had a witness who could identify him, they wouldn’t have let him go. It’s the same with the bank card. They accepted it was a mistake.’

  ‘What about the phone?’ his wife asked.

  ‘Used once and lost in the River Thames.’

  ‘You hope,’ the wife told him. ‘You said the settee was burned. I told you not to trust that fat man. Burn the settee, you told him.’

  Both officers winced when they heard the slap and the woman’s anguished yelp.

  ‘Shut up, woman,’ Bhandal shouted. ‘If you had brought your daughter up to have less love of Western ideas and more respect for our ways, this wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t bring you over so you could raise a whore.’

  ‘You let her go to college,’ the mother shouted. ‘I told you to get her married before she left school. Nobody would have asked where she was.’

  The two LP cops nodded. One whispered. ‘She’s right. They’d have played the racist card and we’d have run a mile.’

  The mother was on a defiant roll, red cheek or not. ‘You said let her finish college. Why? That’s where she met the boy. That’s where it all started. I kept her in. College was where it went wrong, and you let her stay.’

  This time the sound was a full-blown scream of pain followed by sobs.

  ‘Shut up, woman. Can a man get no respect in his own house.’

  The officers looked at each other.

  ‘What do you think?’ the younger one asked.

  ‘If we send the cops round to a domestic, they’ll wonder who called it in,’ the other reasoned, torn between instinct and the integrity of their operation. ‘When the neighbours deny it, they’ll start wondering… He’s hit her twice, though.’

  They listened to silence.

  ‘It’s quiet now. Give it a few minutes. If it starts again, we call it in via Ed Whelan. We can’t sit here worrying about blowing the job when she’s getting a hiding or worse.’

  When the empty space was filled, it was the uncle who spoke.

  ‘In this country, do they need a body to prosecute?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bhandal told him before the silence returned.

  A no-body prosecution was possible but rare and never easy. The prosecution team needed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the victim was dead before they even began the task of proving murder.

  The older cop explained it when he saw the unspoken question flash across young colleague’s face.

  ‘What about the boy?’ It was the uncle again.

  ‘What about him?’ Bhandal’s voice was pitiless. ‘Just a worthless piece of humanity. Fox food.’

  ‘Fox food?’ the younger cop murmured.

  The other whispered. ‘Could mean anything, but foxes tend to operate in the open countryside and above ground.’

  Perhaps the boy was dead and dumped somewhere, providing they weren’t being led up a blind alley.

  ‘We’ll mention it to Ed,’ the older said. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time people have found probes and just given us the run-around.’

  ‘Hi Bev.’ Sam shuffled in the passenger seat, pressed the phone to her ear, and listened. ‘Spot on. Cheers.’

  She turned to Ed. ‘Everybody’s provided a swab. We’ve got something to compare now. They’ll have the profiles off the cigarettes and gum tomorrow.’

  Now it was Ed’s turn to answer his mobile. ‘Tom, how’s it going?’

  He turned to Sam and quickly mouthed ‘Tom King’.

  ‘What, now? We’re snowed under today, Tom. How about tomorrow?’

  He slowed down and depressed the clutch, one hand on the wheel, the other around the phone. Sam changed gear for him with her right hand. ‘Look I’m driving… okay, I’ll come now, but we’ve only got 10 minutes… Where?’

  He stopped at the lights. ‘Yeah, I know it.’

  Ed rang off and dropped the phone into the centre console.

  ‘He says it’s urgent,’ Ed glanced at Sam. ‘We’re meeting him on the marina, near Giorgio’s pizzeria. He’s already there.’

  The tall figure of the young doorman stood out, hands in his jean’s pockets, staring at each approaching car. He walked over when he saw Ed parking up.

  ‘You remember DCI Parker?’ Ed said, as he and Sam got out.

  They all leaned against the railings, Tom in the middle, each watching people on the decks of their boats, all busy with ropes and fenders in the way boat people always seem to be busy with something. The fishy smell of the sea was strong but the screeching gulls seemed to be flying higher than usual, the collateral benefit a drop in their decibel level.

  ‘I saw my mother last week.’ Tom's eyes never strayed from the marina, his voice flat, without emotion. ‘She said you were sound, knew you from the old days as she put it, remembered you were one of the ones who did try to help her.’

  Ed spoke. ‘I’ve always tried to be fair, treat people right. A decent woman your mother, just mixed up with the wrong bloke.’

  Tom still stared straight ahead when he spoke again.

  ‘Sunday,’ he said quietly. ‘I was on the tow path.’

  Sam and Ed’s heads whipped around to look at Tom. He looked at neither, kept his eyes on the boats.

  ‘I saw one of the dickheads from the pub with a ginger lass, standing under a tree. Certain it was him, although I was on the opposite side. They had their backs to me, but turned around when they heard me. That’s when I saw their faces. I know it was dark, but it wasn’t too bad, and they used a Zippo to light their cigarettes, lit up part of the faces. Then a lad walked past them, pissed. He was all over the shop. That’s it, but my mam said I should tell you, that it might be important. I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt.’

  Ed nodded once. ‘When you saw them, were you standing still?’

  Tom finally turned his face from the water and shook his head,

  ‘I was walking
towards them,’ he said. ‘I was past them when I saw the pissed lad. By then I had my back to the two under the tree.’

  ‘What time was this?’ Ed asked him.

  ‘Half three.’

  ‘Did you see anybody else?’

  Tom turned his eyes back to the marina and the slow-churning water, silent for a moment.

  ‘I did see a lass walking towards me,’ he said. ‘She was on the same side of the tow path as me but I never took any notice of her. I was too busy watching what was going on over the other side.’

  Ed shot a glance at Sam.

  ‘Would you recognise any of the people again,’ he looked back at Tom.

  The doorman looked up to the gulls falling and soaring above them.

  ‘Probably the two under the tree but not the drunk lad,’ Tom told them. ‘He was bent over, face down at the floor. I remember he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and bright orange trainers.’

  Sam pushed herself away from the railings.

  R v Turnbull spelled out the guidance for identification evidence and she knew any identification by Tom would be open to challenge.

  ADVOKATE was the pneumonic thousands of police officers used to remember the rules of identification: A - amount of time suspect under observation; D - distance from the witness; V –visibility... and so on, everything that should be covered in a witness statement when identification was an issue.

  Fleeting glimpses, at night and across a river, would be closely scrutinised.

  But if Tom’s ID evidence was corroborated by DNA profiles on the discarded cigarettes and chewing gum, the case became a little tighter. It still didn’t prove Prince and Davies were the killers, but putting them on the tow path when a person wearing the same trainers as Glen Jones was walking towards them less than 150 metres from where his body was found would start to build a case.