The Crime Trade

8

Tina and I spent close to another hour at the scene, interviewing the immediate neighbours in the houses on each side (none of whom could provide us with any leads), before leaving and heading back to the station where we both had plenty of work that needed doing. Among other things, the two of us were heading up an ongoing inquiry into local people who’d supplied their credit-card details to an internet child-porn site based in Arizona. The inquiry had been going on for weeks and there were twenty-two men in our locality who had to be checked out, arrested, questioned and, if necessary, charged by a team of four of us. So far we’d collared nine of them, including a magistrate, a children’s charity worker and a doctor, but each individual case took a lot of effort and manpower, as court orders had to be obtained for credit-card checks and confirmation gained that the cards hadn’t been stolen or were in false names before finally houses and computers were painstakingly searched and arrests made. Every one of the men had visited the site at least five times, most over fifty, a handful over a hundred, and the images contained on it involved the pay-per-view abuse of children, and even babies. It was horrific stuff, all of it, and no-one involved in that inquiry thought it was a waste of our time. We were currently concentrating on a fifty-five-year-old retired school teacher with no previous convictions and an exemplary employment record. He’d visited the site 110 times, on one occasion spending four hours solid on it, at considerable financial cost to himself. We were hoping to arrest him before the end of the week, but I was also due in court that afternoon to testify in a rape trial, so I was no longer sure it was going to happen. In this sort of case that can break a reputation in seconds, you have to be very careful how you tread. Either way, I was going to have a busy day, without any distractions from Operation Surgical Strike.

But if I was hoping to avoid those distractions, I was being unduly optimistic. We got back to the station at 10.40. At 10.45, I convened a meeting of the team on the arrest of the retired paedophile teacher. At 10.50, my extension rang, and the DC who answered it interrupted the meeting to tell me it was urgent. ‘It’s Asif Malik,’ he said. ‘SO7.’

Reluctantly, I got to my feet and asked Tina to chair the meeting in my absence, then left the meeting room.

‘Hello, Asif. Are you all right?’ I asked, picking up the phone.

‘Not really, John, no. I don’t like the fact that Robbie O’Brien’s dead before we can get any information out of him. It makes us all look very stupid. You’ve seen the headlines in this morning’s papers.’

‘I haven’t actually. I haven’t had a chance.’

‘Well, they don’t look too clever.’

‘No, I can imagine.’

‘“High Noon at Heathrow”, according to the Sun, and they’re going to get a lot worse than that as more details start coming out. When they hear about O’Brien, they’re going to be thinking that we’re being completely outmanoeuvred, and we can’t have that.’

‘Who’s taking the case?’

‘Joint Serious Crime Group East and SO7. DCS Flanagan’s going to be heading it up.’

I raised an eyebrow at that one. ‘What? After yesterday?’

‘He followed everything to the letter with Surgical Strike, and we’re very short of available SIOs of DCS level, and this is definitely a DCS-level case. At least he knows the background.’

‘If there’s any assistance I can give, I’ll be more than happy to help.’

‘There is,’ he said. ‘We want you seconded to the inquiry. You and DS Boyd. Flanagan’s clearing it with your chief super now. You both know the victim, you’re familiar with the background, and I hate to say it, but you’re also involved in what’s happened.’

‘Only a limited involvement,’ I told him, keen not to get tarred with the wrong sort of brush.

‘But you know all about it. With everything else, that makes you ideal. Plus, you’re a bloody good copper, and I know you rate Tina Boyd as well.’

I didn’t say anything for a moment.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Of course I’m still here. I’m thinking, that’s all.’

‘Well, that’s the end of my flattery. I want you on this case — we all do. And if you refuse, you’re going to have to have one hell of a good reason why.’

But there was no way I was going to refuse. I was busy, yes. Extremely so. But that was never going to change. As long as I remained in the Met I was going to be overworked — it was as good as part of the job description — but opportunities to get involved in something like this don’t come along very often. Especially cases where you know the victim. I might not have liked Slim Robbie O’Brien, but I wanted to see whoever had murdered him and his grandmother punished. It takes a very dangerous, very cold individual to snuff out two lives as efficiently as the perpetrator of this had. An individual who could do that deserves to spend his days behind bars.

‘If you can clear it with the chief super down here then of course I’m interested. I know Tina will be too.’

‘Consider it done. We’re setting up an incident room at your station, so that’s nice and convenient. We’ve got a meeting scheduled for two p.m.’

‘I can’t do two. I’m in court this afternoon, giving evidence. There’s no way I can get out of it.’

‘Fair enough. Tina’ll have to attend, though. You can get the relevant info off her. What are you doing afterwards?’

‘After court? Going home and having a bite to eat probably.’

‘You’re going to need to talk to Stegs Jenner. Preferably today.’ He gave me Stegs’s address in Barnet. ‘We’re going to want details of all his meetings with O’Brien, what was said-’

‘Haven’t we already got that information? A lot of it came out in the questioning yesterday, and presumably there are records.’

‘There are, and it did, but I want you to go over everything with him again. See if you can pick up anything we might have missed. I also want you to check his movements yesterday in the run-up to the operation. From when he left his house in the morning.’

I was surprised at this last part. ‘He’s not a suspect, is he?’

Malik sighed. ‘Not as such, but there’s a concern that he’s not telling us everything.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘O’Brien had a mobile phone in his pocket when he was found this morning. It looks like a pay-as-you-go. Stegs said yesterday that he hadn’t spoken to O’Brien since Sunday, and he might not have done, but in the phone records section of the mobile it clearly states that a total of three of the last ten calls made on that phone were to a number that we’ve just found out is a Met mobile currently issued to Stegs. Now, it might mean nothing. We’ve got no idea yet when these calls were made, or how long they lasted, or even whether they were answered, but it’s worth asking again whether he’s spoken to O’Brien since Sunday. Can you go and see him tonight?’

‘All right,’ I said, wondering whether this was all they had on him. I found myself hoping so, and hoping too that there was an innocent explanation for it. I didn’t want to see old Stegs get thrown even deeper into the mire.

‘And take Tina if you can. We’ve got another meeting scheduled for nine a.m. tomorrow. You can let us know how it went then. We should also have the initial results of the post-mortem at that point, so we’ll have a more exact time of death for both victims.’

Malik was a fast mover. But I was pretty sure we were all going to have to be fast movers on a case like this, one where even the politicians were interested in seeing a result.

It made me glad I hadn’t made any plans for the next few days.