by Graham Ison
When she arrived at the hotel she casually dropped an envelope on the hall porter’s desk, as was the practice in her trade, before making her way to the third floor.
And that’s when it all started to go wrong.
Gary Crombie opened the door, smiled, and invited her in. It was not until she was well into the room and the door was closed firmly behind her that she saw Gary’s brother Kenny sitting on the bed. In his right hand was a fearsome-looking knife and he was tapping the palm of his other hand gently with its six-inch serrated blade.
Penny turned quickly, the colour draining from her face, but Gary was leaning against the door with a malevolent smile on his face.
‘We’re going for a little ride, darlin’,’ he said. ‘And if you do as you’re told, you won’t get hurt.’
‘What’s this about?’ asked Penny, her voice breaking with the near hysteria which threatened to engulf her.
‘Shut up,’ said Kenny, rising from the bed and pointing his knife towards the girl. ‘We’re going downstairs and you’re going with us. Like there was nothing wrong. But don’t forget that I’ve got a knife and I shan’t hesitate to use it. Got the idea?’
Penny nodded dumbly. She too knew of the death of Gina West and was scared out of her wits.
Kenny placed the knife in a special holster under his jacket and gestured towards the door. They walked casually down the corridor, at one point Gary nodding to a chambermaid, until they reached the fire exit. With a quick look up and down, Gary pushed his way through it, followed by the girl with Kenny bringing up the rear. Quickly, they descended to the ground floor and out through the escape door. In the alleyway at the side of the hotel, the two Crombie brothers bundled the girl into their Rover. Gary took the wheel and Kenny sat in the back next to Penny, once more taking his knife out and laying it menacingly on his lap.
They drove for an hour, being careful to observe speed limits and traffic lights, out through the City and on to Leyton, Wanstead, and Woodford until they reached Tango Harris’s secluded house, in an equally secluded lane, at Buckhurst Hill.
Coasting the last few yards, Gary stopped the car just short of the house, doused the lights and turned in his seat. Grinning at Penny Sinclair, he said, ‘Take your clothes off. All of them.’
‘And if I don’t?’ Convinced that she was about to be murdered, Penny Sinclair developed a little late bravado.
‘If you don’t, you’ll get hurt … nastily. Do it and you’ll be all right.’ And to emphasize what his brother had said, Kenny lifted the knife and touched the girl’s throat with its point.
As quickly as she could in the confined space of the car, Penny stripped off her minimal clothing.
Leaving his brother to guard the girl, Gary walked forward a few yards and peered through the ornamental iron gates of Harris’s house towards the hut that was just inside. There was a light on and the security guard could be seen, with his back to them, watching television.
Stealthily, Gary returned to the car and opened the rear door. ‘Out!’ he said in a menacing whisper and grabbed the girl’s wrist.
Penny was shivering uncontrollably now, both from fear and the cold. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, unable to keep the panic from her voice. She could not believe that these two men had brought her all the way to Buckhurst Hill just to rape her. They could have done that in the comfortable surroundings of the hotel from which they had abducted her. That, more or less, is what she had gone there for. And if she hadn’t got paid … well, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
Pushing the girl the few yards to the gates, Gary and Kenny Crombie forced her up against the cold metal bars and handcuffed her so that she was fully stretched with her hands high above her head.
‘Reckon that’ll teach him,’ said Kenny with a smirk. He gazed wistfully at the naked, helpless girl and then placed a strip of sticking plaster across her mouth.
‘Not quite,’ said Gary and taking a felt-tip pen from his pocket scrawled a message across the girl’s stomach. ‘With love from Billie,’ he said slowly, speaking as he wrote.
They drove for two or three miles before stopping at a phone box. Gary leaped out, dialled 999, and asked for the police. ‘I’ve just seen a funny thing,’ he said when he was connected. ‘There’s a naked girl chained to the gates of Tango Harris’s house in Buckhurst Hill.’ He declined his name and address, got back into the car, and together he and his brother roared away into the night, laughing and throwing items of Penny Sinclair’s apparel out of the car windows at intervals along the way.
The crew of the police car knew where Tango Harris lived and arrived five minutes after receiving the call. They tried the key of their official handcuffs, but it didn’t fit those securing the hapless, shivering girl.
By the time the fire brigade arrived, noisily, and the lane was full of flashing blue lights, the security guard had woken up to the fact that something was going on. He called Tango Harris.
Harris arrived at the gates just as the fire brigade freed Penny Sinclair and a gallant fire-fighter put a coat round her, but he wasn’t quick enough to prevent Harris from seeing the message that Gary Crombie had written on the girl’s stomach.
After both Penny and Harris had denied knowing why anyone should do such a thing — or who ‘Billie’ was — the police left to record the incident as a domestic disturbance. Harris took Penny up to the house, gave her a large brandy, and told Melody to find her some clothes. Then he telephoned Alfie Penrose who was by way of being his chief of staff.
‘I’m not having it,’ said the furious Harris. ‘I’m not having that bastard taking the piss. Straight-forward villainy I can deal with, but this man Crombie has got to be teached. Got it?’
Penrose undoubtedly got it, received a terse briefing from Harris, heavily larded with obscenities, and set out to find a man called Randy Steel.
All in all, Tango Harris was not a happy man.
*
Fox was unhappy about Wayne Parish’s statement. He had brought a copy of it back from Romford and had read it several times.
Then he had telephoned Detective Chief Inspector Godwin and told him to fetch Parish in again.
Finally, he had sent for Denzil Evans and the pair of them had returned to Romford.
Wayne Parish was lounging in a chair in the interview room, dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt, the sleeves of which were stretched over the bulging muscles of his upper arms. He had no previous convictions, but, from Fox’s point of view, he looked as though he ought to have had.
‘I am Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Fox … of the Flying Squad. And this is Detective Inspector Evans.’ Fox sat down opposite Parish and lit a cigarette.
‘That’s very bad for your health, you know,’ said Parish.
‘So’s getting mixed up with Harris and Crombie,’ said Fox.
‘Never heard of them,’ said Parish. ‘Sound like a couple of overcoats.’ He remained lounging, an expression of veiled contempt on his face.
‘The only overcoats they’re interested in are wooden ones. And as you’ve got in between them, you’re in some danger of acquiring one.’ Fox blew smoke in the air and was pleased to see that Parish sat up, the half sneer vanishing from his face. ‘So you have heard of them.’
‘Well, yeah. I mean I’ve heard ’em mentioned … down the gym where I work out, like.’
‘Work with weights, do you?’ asked Fox mildly. ‘Yeah.’
‘Interesting,’ said Fox. ‘So do Harris and Crombie.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yes,’ said Fox. ‘They usually attach them to people before they drop them in the river.’
Parish fidgeted in his chair. ‘What you telling me all this stuff for?’
‘Just so you know who you’ve got mixed up with,’ said Fox. ‘Which is nearly as bad as getting mixed up with me.’
‘What d’you mean … mixed up?’
‘What was your cut?’
‘Eh?’ Parish pretended
to look astonished at Fox’s question. ‘I dunno what you mean.’
‘My dear Mr Parish, are you telling me that this gang of blaggers happened on your lorry with its expensive load quite by accident?’
‘Well, I dunno, do I? I was only the driver.’
‘Only the driver.’ Fox carefully rolled ash from his cigarette and glanced at Evans. ‘He was only the driver, Denzil.’ Fox thumbed through the copy of Parish’s statement and then prodded at a paragraph with his forefinger. ‘Now then, you say that you were driving along, without a care in the world presumably, when out of the sleeping quarters at the back of your cab there appeared a man with a gun. Right so far?’
‘Yeah, well, I told the other copper that.’
‘I know,’ said Fox. ‘He was the one who painstakingly wrote it all down. Then you pulled into a lay-by under the directions of the gentleman with the gun … ’
‘Yeah!’ Parish was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
‘Then, you say, a further four men appeared out of the gloom, tied you up and dumped you on a nearby golf course.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. Why are you going over all this again?’
‘Well, it’s like this,’ said Fox, stubbing out his cigarette end. ‘It often happens that witnesses leave out vital pieces of information. Either they forget them, or the trauma of the occasion has blocked them out.’
‘What the hell are you going on about? I told the other copper that’s what happened.’
‘But you didn’t mention the shot, Mr Parish.’
Behind Fox, Evans glanced briefly at the ceiling. His governor was at it again. Taking a wild guess just to see what happened. Whenever Evans tried it, he usually fell flat on his face, metaphorically, of course. But time after time, he had seen Fox get away with it.
‘The shot? What shot?’ Parish shifted his feet and looked down at the table.
‘When the man who was in your cab jumped down, there was a shot. Yes?’
‘Well, there might have been.’
‘Might have been. Well, either there was or there wasn’t.’
‘Well, there was a noise … sort of like a shot, I s’pose.’
‘That’s my problem, you see.’ Fox brushed his hand across the statement. ‘Just what I was saying. People forget things.’ He leaned forward. ‘Now, Mr Parish, the question I ask myself is, why should you leave out something as vitally important as the sound of a shot? You see, there was no other traffic about. Quiet as a grave. You said all that in your statement. No traffic, no noise, no nothing. Just you, a silent lorry, and five hoods who looked as though they’d recently flown in from Klosters.’
‘I never said nothing about that.’
‘Yes you did, but not in as many words, I’ll give you that, but you did say they were wearing ski masks.’
‘Yeah, well, they were,’ said Parish, by now thoroughly mystified by Fox’s line of questioning.
‘And because you got down from your cab on the same side as the man who had held you up in the first place, you couldn’t possibly have avoided seeing a body on the ground.’ Fox took another wild guess.
‘I can’t say as how I noticed,’ said Parish.
‘Amazing,’ said Fox and glanced at Evans once more. ‘Isn’t that amazing, Denzil?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Evans, unsure what sort of response Fox wanted from him.
‘Good.’ Fox stood up and took a stroll round the room. ‘Now we’re motoring, as they say.’ He turned and leaned over Parish. ‘My problem is this, Mr Parish. It seems likely that you were witness to a murder. And yet you say nothing about it. Not a word. Which leads me to believe that you were a party to this audacious theft, and that you hope to collect a portion of the take, so to speak. So I ask you again, what was your cut?’ Then Fox sat down again and waited.
Parish had started to sweat. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I want my solicitor.’
‘You’ve got one, have you? A solicitor, I mean.’
‘Er, no, not exactly.’
‘Oh well. Not that I can see what you want one for anyway … unless you’re about to confess to a crime, Mr Parish?’
‘This is harassment.’
‘Yes,’ said Fox mildly. ‘Quite possibly, but as you are not a suspect, it doesn’t matter, you see.’
‘But you just said that I—’
Fox held up a hand. ‘Don’t take any notice of me, Mr Parish,’ he said. ‘Just thinking aloud.’ And he smiled at Parish. It was unnerving.
‘Look,’ said Parish eventually, ‘I’ll be honest about this.’
‘Oh, splendid. It’s about time.’
‘I did hear a shot, and I did see a body lying on the ground.’
‘And what was said by these hoods?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Well, when the first geezer, the bloke in my cab, pulled a shooter on me, he just said as how to keep driving. Then a bit later on he told me to pull into a lay-by. Then we waited. No more than two or three minutes, I s’pose. Then this other lot turned up in two cars. One of ’em said, “Out!” That’s all anyone said. The bloke what pulled me jumped down first and got shot—’
‘Just like that?’
‘Yeah. Then the other four blokes bunged his body in the boot of one of the cars and one of ’em drove off. The others tied me up and gagged me. Then, like I said, they bunged me in the other car and dumped me in this field.’
‘The golf course?’
‘Yeah. Leastways, that’s what the law said when they picked me up.’
‘And why didn’t you tell the other officer all this, Mr Parish?’
‘I never wanted to get mixed up in it, did I. See, in my game—’
‘What? Lorry driving?’
‘Yeah. Well, the word was out among the drivers that Harris had been pulling a few artics, see. And he’s got a bit of a nasty reputation. Well, I could see that if I didn’t keep my trap shut, I’d likely get topped an’ all.’
‘What d’you mean, word was out?’
‘Well, it’s about nine or ten hours across to the Hook. Sometimes I do Dover to Ostend — that’s four and a half hours — and the drivers all have grub together. And we get talking, see.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Fox. ‘And presumably mention was made of the fact that on the last few occasions such robberies occurred, a man had crept out of the sleeping quarters of the cab and produced a gun with which to persuade the driver to take a certain course of action?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘But you got into your cab and didn’t check to see if you’d got a stowaway.’
‘Never thought about it.’ Parish avoided Fox’s gaze.
‘Careless,’ said Fox. ‘Either that, or you fully expected a man to pop out somewhere between your depot and Harwich. See my predicament, Mr Parish?’
‘Well, you don’t expect it, like. Do you?’
‘Oh, I do, Mr Parish. I go about confidently expecting villains to pop up from beneath every bush.’
Parish glowered at Fox but said nothing.
‘But I suggest that you didn’t expect to be tied up and dumped on a golf course,’ Fox continued. ‘That was when things started to get slightly iffy. Is that a good guess?’
‘I dunno what you’re on about.’
‘What I’m on about, Mr Parish, is that you thought that you’d be left in the cab after the load had been taken. That you would be tied up — a sort of token tying up, you might say — and that later, at an agreed time, you would free yourself and drive all the way to the nearest nick … and lay a complaint.’ Fox leaned back and studied Parish. ‘But you didn’t expect anyone to get shot, and you didn’t expect to get dumped on a golf course. That about it?’
‘Look, I’ve told you all I know,’ said Parish. He desperately wanted to wipe the sweat from his face, but didn’t dare to.
‘All right,’ said Fox, standing up and giving the impression of having suddenly tired of the whole thing. ‘Another officer will be in sho
rtly to take a full statement from you, Mr Parish. Then you can go.’
‘Here, hold on. Is that it?’ Parish jumped to his feet in alarm.
‘Unless you can think of anything else,’ said Fox.
‘What about protection?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, you said I was in danger, and now I’ve told you all this, they might come after me.’
‘Who might?’
‘Well, Harris, I s’pose … or Crombie.’
‘Yes,’ said Fox thoughtfully. ‘I suppose they might. I’ll see what I can do.’
As Fox strode through to the incident room, Evans caught up with him. ‘Aren’t you going to nick him, guv?’
‘Is that what you’d do, Denzil?’
‘Well, you seem to think he’s implicated.’
‘Undoubtedly, Denzil, undoubtedly. But there’s no evidence. The minute we get him into court, his mouthpiece is going to claim duress and suggest to his client that he stays shtum. And we’ll have blown it. The plan, Denzil, is to use young Mr Parish to trap Messrs Harris and Crombie.’
‘How, sir?’
‘It’s fairly evident to me, Denzil, that Billie Crombie was all set to hijack Parish’s lorry, probably with the assistance of the said Parish, but his little team was jumped by Harris’s mob just before the heist. Frankie Carter got blown away and Tango’s lot took over where Crombie’s lot had been obliged to leave off. Simple.’
‘Well, that’s it, then, guv.’
‘Alas, Denzil, that is not it. There are some vital elements missing.’
‘Like what, sir?’
‘Like witnesses, Denzil,’ said Fox over his shoulder as he threw open the door of the incident room. ‘Your murder, Mr Dorman—’ Fox strode across the room — ‘is definitely tied up with Mr Godwin’s hijacking.’
‘Really, sir?’
‘Oh yes. Mr Parish in there is falling over himself to make another statement.’
‘That’s good news, sir.’
‘Thought you’d be pleased. Oh, and by the way, he’ll need round the clock protection, just in case Tango Harris decides to have a pop at him. Or Billie Crombie for that matter. But discreet protection. The sort that Parish won’t notice, because I am anxious to know who he talks to.’