The Crime Trade

25

I’d been carrying a mean hangover all day and I was looking forward to the end of the working part of it. It hadn’t been helped by the fact that we hadn’t been able to find Robert Panner in any of his possible haunts, and according to the surveillance units he hadn’t shown up at his official address either.

Tina, however, had been more successful. By now it was almost seven p.m. and she, Malik and I sat opposite DCS Flanagan in his office adjoining the O’Brien incident room. Flanagan looked the worst of all of us: tired, stressed and irritable all rolled into one. His face had also taken on the unhealthy red pallor it had had in the aftermath of Operation Surgical Strike, and his tie was badly skewed. According to Tina, he’d come in without a word to anyone that morning, his face tight with worry, and had walked straight into his office, shutting the door behind him and not emerging for another hour. It looked like the relentless pressure for a result was getting to him. His fingers drummed a steady, monotonous beat on the table as he stared at Tina for what seemed like an inordinately long time. In fact, I was just about to ask if he was OK, when he finally spoke.

‘You’re saying that it was Jenner you saw coming out of Melvyn Carroll’s office this afternoon? I know we’ve already been through all this, but I’ve got to be absolutely sure. This is a serving police officer we’re talking about here.’

Tina didn’t hesitate. ‘I followed him, sir. All the way from the PCA offices in Great George Street. And, before you ask, it was definitely Carroll’s offices. No question.’

‘What were you doing following him?’ he asked, with more than a hint of suspicion in his voice. ‘I don’t recall saying we were going to put him under surveillance.’ At the same time, his fingers maintained their steady drumming. Flanagan didn’t seem the remotest bit pleased with the lead she’d turned up.

Tina told him what she’d told me earlier, about the fact that the owner of the only stolen credit card used to purchase a jacket identical to the killer’s lived in Barnet, just down the road from Stegs. ‘It seemed like one coincidence too many, on top of everything else. I knew he was down at the PCA, so I thought I’d watch him for an hour or two, see if something turned up.’

Flanagan nodded, and forced out a constipated smile. It looked like it was the best she was going to get. ‘I’m glad you did. What you saw certainly raises a lot of questions.’ His fingers stopped drumming and he sat back in his seat, using his hand to wipe the sweat away from his forehead.

Once again, I thought about asking him if he was all right, but decided against it. He might have taken my question the wrong way.

He sighed loudly. ‘The question is, where does this leave us? What is Jenner’s part in all this?’

Finally, it was my turn to speak. ‘This is something Asif and I were discussing earlier, sir. I think the visit to Carroll, added to what Tina uncovered about possible links he had to the Holtzes in the past, suggests that he’s on their payroll somewhere. So, if he was working for the Holtzes, he may well now be working for Neil Vamen.’

‘Carroll’s Vamen’s solicitor,’ put in Malik, ‘and if he’s working for Vamen, we do have a motive for Jenner’s role in leaking Surgical Strike.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Flanagan, his interest suddenly very much aroused.

Malik continued. ‘Neil Vamen’s main rival in the north London underworld, the man who’s taken a lot of his old business, is Nicholas Tyndall. The robbery of Stegs and the Colombians last week was carried out by Tyndall’s men, including a man who’s supposedly one of his closest associates, Ashley Grant. That robbery didn’t do Tyndall a lot of good, whether or not he had any part in it. It was such a high-profile failure, in front of so many witnesses, that it was always going to get him serious unwanted attention, as well as upsetting the Colombians. Men he’d be wanting to stay on the right side of.’

‘Tyndall’s still free, though.’

‘That’s true,’ I said, ‘but we’ve got two of his men in custody facing very long prison sentences who we’re trying to get to turn Queen’s evidence. It may be that as a result of what happened we can bring a lot of pressure to bear on Tyndall, and even possibly put him behind bars. Which would suit Neil Vamen perfectly.’

‘So you’re saying Vamen set the whole Heathrow thing up? Using Stegs?’

I nodded. ‘It’s certainly possible. Likely even. Stegs, for whatever reason, uses O’Brien to provide the robbery tip to Strangleman Grant, either with or without Tyndall’s knowledge, and I suspect it was without. Grant, who we know is something of a short-term merchant, sees an opportunity to make some easy money and snatch a few kilos of top-grade coke, takes the bait, not having a clue that he’s about to walk into a trap, and bang, it all goes wrong.’

‘We were left with O’Brien as the only one aside from Stegs who knew the truth,’ continued Malik, ‘and who was going to be the most obvious suspect as the source of the leak. So someone else, most likely one of Vamen’s people, got rid of him.’

For what seemed like a very long time, there was silence. I could almost hear the cogs whirring as each person picked at the pros and cons of the theory Malik and I had just put forward. Flanagan seemed to be the one concentrating the hardest, his eyes tight shut, the sweat re-forming on his forehead. I could hear his breathing — short and fast, as if he was having a panic attack.

‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ he said at last.

‘We know that Vamen’s been trying to get at Merriweather in Belmarsh,’ said Malik.

Flanagan nodded. ‘True, true. I can see the logic in it as a theory. The only thing is there’s no evidence backing it up. At the moment, it’s nothing but conjecture, and we can’t touch Jenner for any of it. I think the important thing’s to keep following up on our other leads, particularly Robert Panner. We need to get him to talk.’

‘We’re pulling out all the stops trying to find him,’ I said, ‘but he seems to have gone to ground.’

‘Well, keep looking. It’s urgent we get him in custody. If he is the shooter, he might be able to point the finger at Jenner.’

‘What are we going to do about Stegs?’ Tina asked.

‘Nothing yet. We’ll keep an eye on him, but that’s all. I don’t want to spook him, he’s a cunning sod. He made a mistake today, but he’s not the sort who makes very many of them. I don’t want you to go following him again, Tina, OK? There’s plenty of other things that need doing. You can help go through that list of Desmarches suit owners.’

‘I’d like to follow up on my stolen card lead if I could, sir?’

‘What? The Barnet one? What’s there to follow up on? Did they catch the scrote who stole it, then?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s my impression of Stanbury, the man who reported it stolen. There’s something not right about him. First of all, he didn’t phone me back. Then, when I called him again, he became very furtive and sketchy on the details. Apparently the card was taken during a burglary while he was away for the weekend, but he couldn’t tell me what else had been stolen. It seemed to me he was hiding something.’

‘Like what?’ asked Malik.

‘I got the idea that perhaps the card hadn’t been stolen,’ she said, turning in his direction. ‘Or maybe that it had been stolen, but that he knew full well who’d stolen it.’

‘You think someone paid him so they could use it while he was away?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I checked with the credit card company and the spending on it started on the evening he left for the long weekend and stopped abruptly three days later, two hours before he informed them it had been stolen. There was no other attempt to spend money on it. It sounds very fishy to me.’

‘But all it shows is that maybe your man Stanbury isn’t the most honest in the world,’ I said. ‘Even if he can tell us who was actually using it, that person’s unlikely to be the killer, is he?’

‘I’d like the chance to follow it up though, that’s all.’

‘Well, you’ve done pretty well today, Tina,’ Flanagan told her, ‘so I’m not going to stand in your way. We’ve got another meeting at eight-thirty tomorrow morning which I’d like everyone to attend. Go and see him after that.’

Tina nodded, and the meeting broke up. I looked at my watch. Quarter past seven. Time to head home. We left Flanagan sitting in his office looking as if all the troubles of the world were on his shoulders, and it made me think that perhaps running high-profile murder cases wasn’t the best career role to aspire to, not if you wanted to live a long and healthy life. After we’d said goodbye to Malik, I told Tina that I was going to buy her a bottle of decent champagne, and she asked me why.

‘Because Flanagan may not have shown much enthusiasm for all the hard work you’ve put in, but you deserve it.’

‘He’s right, though. We’re still a long way from a result.’

‘Bullshit. We’re getting close. And when we crack this case, it’ll be down to a lead that you uncovered, I’d put money on that.’

She smiled. ‘You reckon?’

‘Definitely. Now, let’s go and get this champagne. And keep our fingers crossed that Robert Panner shows up.’