by T S O'Rourke
‘So, which cab company was it?’ Carroll asked.
‘The Gem Hackney Cab Company on Essex Road,’ Jones replied. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Yeah, it’s above that Chinese chipper....’ Carroll said.
‘Well, do you want to go and see how Wheeler is getting on? Oh, and tell him to get his backside in here as soon as he has anything. And I want you two in here as well, understood?’ Jones said, returning his gaze to a pile of reports on his desk.
‘Sir,’ Grant said, following Carroll out of the DCI’s office and into the squad room.
Wheeler sat hunched over the computer terminal sucking on a ball-point pen. He hadn’t noticed that it was leaking, and the ink had stained his lips blue.
‘We can’t leave you for a minute, can we?’ Carroll said, pulling the pen from Wheeler’s mouth with a grin. Wheeler looked at the pen, then rubbed his mouth and looked at his hand. It was blue. Very blue. His face went a deep shade of red as Carroll leaned over and looked at the computer screen. Grant did likewise.
‘Colin Nash,’ Carroll said to himself, looking down through the file. ‘One conviction for murder and one prison sentence of five years. He was only released a couple of months ago, it seems,’ Carroll said, turning to Grant.
‘And that’s not all. Look – we were right, a military record. Dishonourable discharge in 1991. Doesn’t say why, though,’ Grant said, returning his eyes to the screen.
‘Well, I know how we can find out a little more about this guy. The guy at the MOD gave me a contact name for the SAS. With this information I should be able to get some more details. See if you can dig out the full file on him, and print me out a couple of colour pictures of that mugshot. We may need it,’ Carroll said to Wheeler, who was still rubbing his lips with the back of his hand in an effort to remove the ink stain.
Grant turned to his partner and spoke slowly, deliberately.
‘What’s the point in contacting the SAS now? I mean, we have his name, address, and we’ll soon have all the details of his conviction. What more do you need to know?’
‘I’ll put it this way, Sam, if I’m gonna be chasing after some sick psycho-killer who’s ex-SAS, then I want to know what he’s capable of. Do you understand?’ Carroll said, patronisingly.
‘Yeah, of course. I’ll have a word with Jones and see if we can arrange to have some back-up when we decide to go in,’ Grant said.
‘Good thinking, Tonto!’
Wheeler, still rubbing his lips, turned and called Carroll, who was by now sitting on his desk flicking through his notebook.
‘I think you should read this, Dan.’
‘What’ve you turned up?’
‘Colin Nash killed his pregnant wife after he came back from the Gulf War. According to the file his defence in court was that he was suffering from Gulf War Syndrome and was depressed. His wife had apparently been on the game when he was away in Kuwait and had gotten pregnant. He said he just flipped when he came back and found out. Looks like he did the same to his wife as he’s been doing to these call girls. She was opened up like an envelope, and the foetus was missing. It was never found,’ Wheeler said.
‘Well, that explains the motive. It’s our guy all right. We’re gonna need the Special Operations guys and their water pistols....’ Carroll said, rubbing his chin.
A quick call to the SAS contact that Major Whalley had given Carroll would give them all the relevant information they would need. That is if they could get any information out of the army. They were notorious for their secretive ways and hated giving out information on their operations and servicemen – especially if it could bring a regiment into disrepute.
The contact was a man called Major Peter Lewis, and he wasn’t too keen on talking with a nosy detective.
‘Look, we think that Nash is responsible for the deaths of three women over the last month – we need your help to catch him. We know where he’s living, but I want to know how dangerous the guy could be. What was he trained for?’ Carroll demanded to know.
‘Nash was drummed out of the regiment after he was convicted of killing his wife. He claimed he had Gulf War Syndrome and was suffering from bouts of depression. That’s all I can tell you, detective,’ Major Lewis replied.
‘What was he trained as? What was his speciality? I know you guys train for specific roles, so he must’ve been trained for some bloody thing or another....’ Carroll said, sounding more than a little frustrated with Lewis’ answers.
Finally, Lewis began to crumble a little and gave Carroll a morsel of information.
‘He was trained in hand-to-hand combat and he was one of the best marksmen that we’ve ever had in the regiment. He went through a tough time in Iraq, he lost practically all of his comrades in the one sortie. He was never quite the same afterwards. He’s quite well trained....’
‘Don’t you mean dangerous?’ Carroll replied.
‘He’s no longer a member of the regiment, and we’re no longer responsible for his actions. Now, if that’s all, I’ll bid you good day, detective. I’m a very busy man.’
‘Thanks for your help,’ Carroll said, hanging up.
Grant entered the squad room ashen-faced and made straight for his partner.
‘Uniforms have just found another dead hooker. Looks like it’s our guy again. We’d best get the ball rolling on this quickly, otherwise we’ll be standing over a few more dead bodies....’
‘Where was she found?’
‘Noel Road. The occupant found her when he came home from work. She was all over his carpet, poor girl. We should have another word with the DCI, see if we can’t get rolling this evening,’ Grant said.
‘This evening....’ Carroll said, walking over to the coffee machine.
Chapter 24
DCI Jones had organised some armed back-up for the raid on the killer’s house having spoken to Grant. It was deemed necessary, Jones had told the Divisional Commander, due to the fact that Nash was ex-SAS.
With up to twenty armed and well-trained special operations officers on the scene, Nash would be in no position to put up any degree of a struggle. At least that was the thinking of the Special Operations Squad. Between snipers placed on surrounding roof-tops, surveillance cameras and a mobile communications support system, they had everything they could possibly need. Including a great deal of courage. No one, even a well-trained police officer, likes going into an unknown situation where their lives are in danger. But that was part of the job.
Dan couldn’t understand the special operations boys. He called them ‘toy soldiers’ prancing about with their sub-machine guns and body armour. It was one thing joining the force to fight crime, but all of this heavy artillery was nonsense in his eyes. When he did have to carry a gun, like now, Dan didn’t go in for the whole ‘Dirty Harry’ routine. Toy soldiers or not, he was happy that they were there, he decided, watching them prepare their gear at the station, prior to moving out on the killer’s address.
Holloway Road on a Wednesday evening was full of life, with people making their way home from work and the supermarket. The pubs were full too.
Because of this fact, the whole assault force had gathered a couple of streets away and sent a surveillance van around to the killer’s address. On examining the front door they established that the house was broken up into five flats. And no one had any idea which belonged to Nash. Carroll heard the surveillance team’s report over the radio and sighed heavily. Grant looked at him thoughtfully before speaking.
‘The boys are surely in for a hard job if he’s at home....’
‘You can sing it. You never know what sort of artillery he could have up there. A lot of these army guys are gun freaks, you know. They have huge collections of guns and knives and stuff like that,’ Carroll said, shaking his head.
‘Well, he’ll be up against twenty of the Met’s best. He won’t stand a chance....’
‘Yeah, but what worries me isn’t the fact that they’re the best or that he’s dangerous – what wo
rries me is that they’ll kill the fucker and we won’t get to go to court on it. I want to see this one go down for a long, long time, Sam, you know what I mean?’
‘Yeah. Listen,’ Grant said, turning up the police radio in their car. ‘I think they’re getting ready to go in. We’d best get ready to rock n’ roll,’ Grant continued, starting the car.
The police radio belched out the command to go in and a cacophony of sirens filled the air.
At the scene, ten armed policemen battered down the front door and stormed the building, while from the rear, another five entered through a now broken back door. Screams filled the air as they systematically went through the house, breaking down doors and scaring innocent people half to death. In the first flat, a pregnant woman was feeding a small child while she watched TV. When her door was broken down and three armed men entered, she had cowered in the corner of the room as one of the men shouted a question at her.
‘Police! Which flat does Colin Nash live in?’ the officer screamed.
The woman was dumbfounded and sought desperately to find her voice.
‘He, he’s in the top flat, I think... what’s going on?’ she asked, timidly.
Before she knew what was happening, the three armed men were gone, and the remains of her front door lay in several pieces on the floor.
The three officers moved quickly up the stairs and positioned themselves outside the top flat, armed to the teeth. A further four of their number soon followed as the message was relayed down the chain of command via their communications system.
Taking deep breaths of air in an effort to psyche themselves up, the leading man demolished the door with his battering ram and two officers ran inside, machine guns at the ready. The bedsit was empty.
Inside lay what Carroll and Grant surmised, upon their arrival in the crummy little flat, was a week’s worth of dirty dishes.
‘Doesn’t look like our man’s army training paid off in this case, does it?’ Carroll said shaking his head. Grant just grunted and went to look under the bed.
‘Let’s see if there are any surprises under here,’ Grant said, kneeling down and lifting back the sweat-stained duvet cover.
Cautiously, Grant slid a metal box out from under the bed. It was the type that you could find at the bottom of every soldier’s bunk. It was a metal footlocker, with a thick lock on it.
‘Take a look at this, looks like it might be his army gear....’ Grant said, testing the lock to see if it would open.
‘Get one of the specials to have a look at it, they usually have a locksmith with them,’ Carroll said, moving across the room towards the kitchen area, which also housed a rather grubby looking electric shower.
‘I think it’s time we got forensics up here to get a set of his prints. We’ll need them when we catch the fucker,’ Grant said, looking over at his partner. Carroll was searching through the cupboards in the hope of finding a weapon. There were none.
The special operations locksmith, a rotund man of around forty five, had climbed the four flights of stairs and was now standing before them looking a little short of breath.
‘I thought you guys had to be really fit?’ Carroll remarked, grinning widely at the man now standing before him.
‘I’m a locksmith, not a trigger man,’ came the cold-eyed response.
‘Well, when you’ve finished panting, perhaps you could open that lock for us,’ Carroll said, pointing to the footlocker.
‘I’ll have it open for you in a jiffy,’ the man said, confidently.
‘I think we should get everyone out of here as soon as possible and set up a surveillance unit in case he comes back,’ Grant said, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, as he watched the locksmith at work.
‘Well, I seriously doubt that he’ll be coming back here tonight – at least not if he’s seen the news! There are three camera crews out there already, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Don’t worry – it’ll all come out in the wash. Besides, it might help us catch him....’ Grant concluded.
‘Got it!’ The locksmith said with an air of triumph, as he slowly removed the lock from the footlocker.
‘Okay, stand aside,’ Carroll said, intent on opening the locker himself.
The locksmith looked up at him unhappily, as though a child who has been refused permission to open a Christmas present. Carroll knelt down and undid the clasp holding the locker shut. Slowly, he lifted the lid, amazed at what he had seen. He had been right – the guy was a gun freak. There before him lay an assault rifle, two revolvers and a little black wooden case on which was written: Beretta, 9mm.
Carroll looked up at his partner and then down at the case, which he opened. Just as he had feared, the box was empty.
‘What’ve you got there?’ DCI Jones asked, entering the room in a fluster, out of breath like the locksmith had earlier been.
‘Looks like it’s our man’s own little arsenal, sir,’ Grant replied, looking down at the locker.
‘We’ve got one assault rifle, looks like a Kalashnikov, and two .38 Smith & Wesson revolvers. There’s also a case for a Beretta 9mm, but it’s empty, sir,’ Carroll said, looking up at his superior.
‘Well, let’s get the forensics boys in to do a sweep for latent fingerprints and get the scene cleared as soon as possible. I want you two over at the station in an hour for the press conference, understood?’ Jones said, twitching his nose and re-adjusting his glasses, before turning to leave. ‘And don’t be late!’ he shouted as he descended the stairs, as if it was an after-thought.
‘He should be on the fuckin’ Flying Squad – talk about a quick visit,’ Carroll said.
‘I don’t think he likes giving press conferences – the media always wind him up and he gets very nervous....’ Grant said.
‘It’s a pity about him, isn’t it, eh?’
A large crowd had by now gathered outside the building and the television camera crews were busy preparing reports for the next main news bulletin of the day. A young reporter pushed through the crowd and made for Carroll and Grant as they walked to their car.
‘Detective Carroll, I wonder if I could ask you a few questions?’ she said, carrying a small recording device and a hand-held microphone.
It was one of the female reporters that Carroll had spoken to outside the station after the second victim had been found. He recognised her instantly.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the press conference back at the station, Ms....?’ Carroll said, searching for her name.
‘Did you find anything in the flat to suggest that the occupant is the call girl killer? Were there any remains in the flat? Any weapons?’ she continued, following the two detectives to their car.
‘No, there were no corpses, but we did find some weapons. You’ll have to wait for the press conference....’
‘It’s Miss Deane, I’m with Capital Radio....’ she said with a smile, thankful that Carroll had given her enough information with which to work. That one morsel would be more than enough with which to beat her competitors, and she would soon be filing her story with the newsroom over the phone.
Grant got into the car on the driver’s side and unlocked the passenger side door. Carroll unbuttoned his raincoat and got in, grinning widely.
‘She’s got some pair of lungs that girl, eh? Did you see the way she looked at me?’ Carroll said.
‘She used you, man. She just used you. All she had to do was smile at you and you gave her information that we aren’t even gonna give out at the press conference. The last thing the public want to hear is that there’s an ex-SAS man on the loose who’s carrying a gun and has already killed three prostitutes! Jones will surely kill you this time....’
‘Ah, relax – when we do give out a description it’ll just mean that we’ll get more calls. People are very quick to report a sighting of a man they think is armed and dangerous, but less inclined if they think he’s not, you know....’
‘Well, it’s your head this time....’
<
br /> ‘Sure who’s gonna tell him it was me?’ Carroll said, self-assuredly.
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, Miss Deane was holding a microphone in her hand. Ten to one your voice is gonna be all over the airwaves in a half an hour... so figure it out for yourself, Kemo Sabe!’ Grant replied abruptly.
Carroll went quiet and a little red in the face.
‘Well, what the fuck, it might help us catch Nash, you know....’
Grant said nothing, but pulled out into the evening traffic and headed back down Holloway Road towards Highbury and Islington roundabout.