The Blow Out

by Bill Rogers

  She leaned into the microphone. ‘There is some indication that a foreign substance may have been involved. We’re in the process of trying to establish the nature of that substance.’

  ‘Foreign as in Russian?’ asked Ginley.

  It was clear from the expressions on the sea of faces in front of Helen that most of the other people in the room had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘Not every unidentified substance has to be about the Russian State,’ she said. Regretting it immediately.

  ‘Not even when it comes in the form of a pellet ?’ shouted Ginley over the chorus of questions he had unleashed from those around him.

  McAndrew placed her hand over the microphone again. ‘Damage limitation,’ she whispered. ‘Give them something to lessen the speculation and I’ll move it on as quickly as possible.’

  Helen nodded. At the briefing they had discussed the worst-case scenario, and this was it. She just hoped she could remember the form of words that had been agreed.

  ‘It is the case,’ she said, more calmly than she felt, ‘that we believe this unknown substance to have been delivered via an air rifle pellet three days prior to Mr O’Neill having been admitted to hospital. Despite this being an unusual mode of attack, we have no reason to believe that the motive is political in any shape or form. On the contrary. We believe it to have been entirely personal. Members of the public should not be concerned and it would be irresponsible to suggest otherwise. I am unable to add any more at this stage as it would prejudice our investigation.’ As Helen leaned back a barrage of questions erupted.

  Grace McAndrew took hold of the microphone and waited until a modicum of order had been restored. ‘We will not take any more questions,’ she said. ‘However, ACC Gates will make a direct appeal to the public, which we trust you will support by all means at your disposal.’

  ‘We are particularly interested,’ Helen began, ‘in hearing from anyone who may have seen someone acting suspiciously in or around Worsley Golf Course between the hours of 7 a.m. last Friday morning and twelve noon on the same day. If you believe that you have any information, however small, that may assist us in this investigation, contact us directly by dialling 111, or by speaking anonymously with CrimeStoppers on 0800 555 111, or online at www.crimestoppers-uk.org. Thank you.’

  Helen and the senior press officer pushed back their chairs, stood up, and left the room.

  ‘Well done, Ma’am,’ said Grace McAndrew.

  ‘I’d save the congratulations till you’ve seen the headlines,’ said Helen despondently. ‘This isn’t Children’s Newsround we’re talking about.’

  Chapter 17

  ‘You look dreadful,’ said Andy. ‘Like you’ve been up all night.’

  He, on the other hand, looked fresh and laid-back in one of his trademark T-shirts and a pair of cycling shorts. Hugging a cortado, he had chosen a discreet corner seat out of earshot of the handful of customers in the industrial-chic Dockyard bar in the heart of Media City.

  Jo dropped her bag on the table, put down her mug, and pulled up a chair beside him. ‘That’s because I have,’ she said. ‘As good as. I clocked off at six, grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep, and here I am.’

  ‘Very commendable,’ he said, ‘if it wasn’t for the fact that sleep deprivation is totally counterproductive. The brain does its optimum problem-solving while we’re asleep. That’s why the best solutions tend to come to us in the morning. As William Blake put it, “Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.” ’

  ‘So how come owls are considered wise, when they do their best work at night?’

  He smiled. ‘You forget, they then sleep throughout the day.’

  ‘Thank you for slipping away from the office,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to breeze back in when I knew you were all so busy on the honour killing case.’

  ‘Your email piqued my interest.’

  Jo blew across the surface of her coffee. ‘I knew it would.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, leaning back in his chair and cradling his head in his hands.

  ‘Because apart from the bizarre modus operandi, there are so many potential motives and, so far, not a single suspect.’

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘But it’s the MO that interests me most. That is what lies at the heart of every behavioural profile. If you had to ascribe a single motive to this killer based on his method of dispatch alone, which one would you choose, Jo?’

  ‘Revenge,’ she replied, without a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the unusual and horrific nature of the means he chose to kill his victim. Horrific, both because of the time it took to end O’Neill’s life and the nature of the suffering that it caused. Only someone who had reason to really hate him would have gone to the trouble of choosing such a method.’

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  Jo put her mug down. ‘The planning involved. This was not a spur-of-the-moment killing – not in the heat of battle, as it were. Researching the poison, whatever it was; preparing the pellet to transport the poison effectively; choosing the crime scene to avoid detection; knowing the victim’s movements. Practice shooting. All of this suggests highly sophisticated planning over time.’

  Andy unclasped his hands and straightened up. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘You should be doing my job.’ He removed his glasses and began to polish them.

  Jo recognised the signs. ‘And now you’re about to tell me everything I missed out.’

  He smiled and put his glasses back on. ‘Not quite everything. Not until I have more information.’

  ‘However?’ said Jo, picking up her mug.

  ‘However, I can tell you that there are two possible scenarios here. One of which accords exactly with your analysis. The other does not – at least not in its entirety.’

  ‘Now you’re losing me.’

  ‘Bear with me,’ he replied. ‘If we take your initial hypothesis of a slow-burn revenge killer, what does that look like?’

  He placed his hand on the trackpad and opened a file on his computer screen. It was a diagrammatic cross section of a volcano. ‘There are a number of metaphors we behavioural psychologists apply to revenge killers. This is my personal favourite.’

  He used the cursor to move around the diagram.

  ‘Down here in the depths is the magma. Molten rock bubbling away. Red-hot, desperate to escape. Blocked by the plugs of lava at the surface. It toils away, the pressure building as more and more magma pushes up from the depths. On the surface, there are few if any signs of the turmoil below. The odd whiff of sulphur perhaps. A few tremors. But nothing to indicate with any certainty when the volcano will erupt with violent and unpredictable force.

  ‘Thus it is with the slow-burn revenger. One with a very personal hurt to avenge. He, or she, will be adept at hiding their simmering anger. The longer they do so, the greater the pressure, the frustration, the rage. There will be tiny signs of mental trauma that only those who know them intimately may pick up on. Even then, they’re likely to be misinterpreted as bad temper, depression, a minor psychotic episode. However, those who know how to read the runes—’

  ‘Forensic psychologists, like you?’

  He nodded, showing just a hint of irritation at the interruption. ‘—those signs will appear as warning markers. Unfortunately, without access to the perpetrator’s psychiatric history, the only time that’s going to happen is after the crime has been committed. After he or she has already blown.’

  ‘So you’re basically saying you can’t help me?’

  ‘I’m not saying that at all. Only that what help I can provide may be of limited value.’

  ‘That’s a given,’ said Jo. ‘You mentioned two scenarios?’

  He swivelled his chair to face her. ‘The second still includes the one I’ve just set out, but it also involves a third party – a very different individual.’

  ‘Different in what way?’

  ‘Cold, indi
fferent, heartless, mercenary, driven by a very different motive: money.’

  ‘A professional hitman.’

  ‘Or an amateur hitman.’

  ‘I’m inclined to discount the amateur,’ said Jo, ‘given the level and quality of planning involved. The possibility of a paid assassination is already on our radar, because those seem to be the only precedents for this kind of MO. What you’re saying is that we could be looking for two perpetrators acting in common. The paymaster with the grievance and the hitman who carried out the killing?’

  ‘Exactly. And if so, that would entail two very different profiles. Even the profile for the person with the grievance would be different because the act was performed at arm’s length. Through an intermediary.’

  ‘I get that,’ said Jo. She downed the rest of her coffee and stood up. ‘I’m grateful, Andy. How soon could you get something over to me?’

  ‘This afternoon,’ he told her. ‘With the usual caveat: don’t set too much store by it. I just hope it helps.’

  Chapter 18

  Nick Carter waved her over the second she stepped inside the incident room.

  ‘We’ve made some progress!’ He pointed to his computer screen. ‘I’ll show you.’

  ‘In my office,’ she said. ‘I need to sit down.’

  ‘Are you alright?’ he asked as they weaved their way between the desks.

  ‘I’m fine. Just a bit lightheaded.’

  He lowered his voice.

  ‘You need to get your head down as soon as you can. Have a little snooze. I’ll cover for you.’

  ‘Like that would go down well. It’s a shame Gordon didn’t have blinds fitted.’

  ‘They told him he couldn’t. Force policy.’ He mimed quotation marks with his fingers. ‘Openness and transparency apparently. For which read austerity. They couldn’t afford them.’

  Jo put her bag on the desk and her jacket over the back of her chair.

  ‘It’s quiet in there,’ she said. ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘Three of them have gone to retrieve passive data identified by the house-to-house team. Two of them I sent to join the door-to-door enquiries. The six who worked through the night with you I told to come in at twelve. No point in having a load of zombies wandering around the place like the living dead.’

  Jo woke up the computer screen, entered her password, and clicked on the Alecto folder.

  Nick pointed to the Forensics subfolder and then one of the files marked Ballistics.

  ‘Before they sent the pellet off to Porton Down,’ he said, ‘they weighed it inside the evidence bag, took some photographs, and showed them to their ballistics expert.’

  A series of photographic images appeared.

  ‘It’s an Air Arms Diablo Field Domed .177 calibre, 4.51mm pellet,’ said Nick. ‘It’s all there in the report.’

  Jo zoomed in on the first of the images. Despite the coating of dried soil, it was unmistakably an air rifle pellet, although not a standard one. This was a partly flattened, straight-sided metal cylinder with a broad dome at the end. She nodded.

  ‘Higher velocity, with a flatter ballistic curve in flight. Light and powerful. It provides greater accuracy over a longer distance.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ said Nick.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘I came across these during my weapon training.’

  She moved through the remainder of the images, stopped on one that caught her eye, and zoomed in. It was a close-up of the domed head. She zoomed in closer.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘You can just make out tiny perforations on the surface. Most of them are filled with soil. That must have been how he inserted the poison.’

  ‘They’re not much larger than pinpricks,’ Nick observed. ‘How the hell did he get it in there, let alone keep it there? Surely the pressure would have flushed it out as it flew through the air?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m hoping Porton Down will be able to tell us.’

  She closed the file. ‘Is that it, Nick?’

  ‘No, there’s more. While you’ve been catching up on your beauty sleep we’ve been looking at possible motives.’

  She scooted her chair back.

  ‘The obvious one is Benjamin Stanley, the guy Ronnie O’Neill committed GBH on. The reason why he was imprisoned. Where are we up to with him?’

  ‘It was a nasty assault. With a meat cleaver. O’Neill was lucky he wasn’t done for attempted murder. Stanley was trying to muscle in on O’Neill’s territory. Pushing drugs that he’d allegedly sourced from a mob in Newcastle. O’Neill and Yates paid him a visit at his home. They claimed Stanley picked up a cleaver from the central island in his kitchen – one of those wicked ones the Chinese use for chopping ingredients – and threatened them with it.’

  ‘More likely defending himself,’ said Jo.

  ‘That’s what he said. What wasn’t disputed was that O’Neill wrestled it off him and sliced half his ear off. He claimed it was an accident while they were struggling. Stanley swore that O’Neill pulled it free, then deliberately swung it at him. His wife corroborated his story. Yates stood by his boss’s account.’

  ‘I can see why the CPS went for GBH,’ she said. ‘Either way it seems to me they both had a reason to want to revenge themselves.’

  ‘Maybe Stanley was worried O’Neill would do exactly that when he came out of Belmarsh?’

  Jo wasn’t so sure. ‘Ronnie was perfectly capable of arranging that from inside. And what better alibi than to have been residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure? But you’re right. We can’t afford to ignore the possibility. Do we have any other suspects yet?’

  Nick leaned over, slid her trackpad towards him, and selected another folder. Jo was too tired to tell him that she was perfectly capable of managing this herself. That he had only to point to the screen. Maybe she would next time he looked like doing it. Or was she simply being petty-minded?

  ‘DI Robb over at Operation Challenger sent us these details of rival drug gangs, known wholesale suppliers and smugglers, and major dealers he may have ripped off, or inadvertently sold a dodgy supply to. She says your NCA could have sent you the same, given the two of them are working together.’

  There were over twenty different files, each codenamed.

  ‘So many?’ she said.

  ‘That’s just the tip of the iceberg.’

  He clicked on the first of the files. A chart appeared, listing names and roles within the criminal organisation, each with a hyperlink attached. Jo reclaimed the trackpad and clicked on the link beside the head of the gang. Four pages of information appeared covering his life story, police record, known and suspected illegal activities, criminal associates, a picture file with mug shots, and covert photographs.

  ‘They’re all like this,’ said Nick. ‘I’ve got two DCs working their way through, trying to establish any connections with our victim. It’ll be a damn sight quicker if you can persuade DI Robb to talk us through it.’

  Jo had opened a link entitled Operation Mandera, Current status. Whole blank sections within paragraphs of marked text had been redacted.

  ‘What’s that about?’ she asked. ‘I thought we were supposed to be on the same side?’

  ‘Apparently they’ve done that to protect a CHIS,’ he told her. He shook his head. ‘Covert Human Intelligence Source – what was wrong with just saying “undercover officer”?’

  ‘Not all covert sources are police officers,’ she reminded him. ‘They could be using a civilian employee or a paid informant.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Nick. ‘That’s who we need to be talking to. Someone on the inside who really knows what’s going on.’

  ‘That isn’t going to happen anytime soon.’ Jo had been there. Protecting your asset came before everything else. If not, who was going to be stupid enough to put themselves in such a dangerous position in the first place?

  ‘What about the other line of enquiry I asked you to set up?’ she said. ‘The possibility that
there was an internal feud or takeover brewing while O’Neill was inside? Maybe that’s why Steven Yates has gone walkabout?’

  Nick stood up and stretched. ‘I’m waiting for DCI Fox over at Xcalibre to get back to me. If anyone knows, he will.’

  ‘Well, chase him up for me.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Do we know where Stanley is right now?’

  ‘He hasn’t left town if that’s what you’re wondering.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘It’s all in that file marked Hippo.’

  ‘On the heavy side, is he?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  Jo clicked on the file and saved it to her tablet’s Dropbox.

  ‘I’m going to pay him a visit, Nick. While I’m gone, see if you can find out where the hell Steven Yates is. He didn’t turn up for the reconstruction and no one has seen hide nor hair of him since. If he’s hell-bent on revenge for the murder of his boss, we have to stop him before he triggers a bloodbath.’

  Chapter 19

  ‘What’s this? A halfway house?’ said Carly Whittle.

  ‘How d’you mean?’ asked Jo, switching off the engine.

  ‘In my limited experience,’ said Carly, ‘most dealers live in social housing – flats and semis – that mask the size of their enterprise. The Mr Big drug barons live in mansions. That’s when they’re not living it large on the Costa Del Sol.’

  Jo looked out of the window. The 1930s four-bedroom detached in the Stockport suburb of Heaton Mersey had been given a substantial makeover completely out of keeping with its neighbours. PVC windows had replaced the original sashes. Spherical CCTV cameras hung below the eaves at either side of the blue slate roof. A Palladian porch had been added. Stone lions stood on concrete plinths beside the six-foot high electronic gates.

  ‘I see where you’re coming from,’ she said. ‘Not going to win any Design Council awards, is it?’

  The gates were open. In the driveway, a man was power-washing the rear of a dark blue Jaguar XJ Portfolio.

  ‘He’s not looking to hide his wealth from the tax man, is he, Boss?’ Carly commented as they unclipped their seat belts. ‘And, assuming that’s him, I can see where he got his nickname from.’