Crucified

Chapter 31

In the incident room, Jack was working through another set of statements, court dates and magistrates’ schedules, trying hard to stay awake. Laura on the other hand couldn’t sit still, she was so frustrated with the Jason Marks case.

‘That slippery lawyer of his is going to spring him, even though he was caught on camera red-handed. He’s got previous, I just know it.’

‘Why don’t you just let it go,’ Jack said.

Laura showed no sign she’d heard him. ‘I’m going to have one more search. I’d really like to get one over that bloody woman.’

Laura went off to the records department as Jack continued working at his desk. He would have to have a meeting with DCI Clarke to talk about the overload of cases instigated by Armani’s gang strategy.

Laura logged into the main records computer and immediately noticed that Jack Warr had also been down there recently, as everyone using the computer had to log the date and time of access. Curious to know what he had been checking out, she brought up the old case that both of them had worked on. It had been a major double operation with the drug squad and Ridley, investigating the murder of an elderly woman. She was fast forwarding through details about the lengthy search for a suspect, Adam Border, the victim’s son. About to close the file, she stopped, as photographs of Border from childhood to his teenage years came up on the screen. She sat back, frowning, moving the curser back and forth until she enlarged one profile, the teenager wearing a baseball cap. Laura suddenly remembered having déjà vu at Fulham station as she looked at the photograph of a man wanted for questioning in connection with the murder at the framer’s shop. It was Adam Border.

At the same time, O’Reilly was being brought up from the cells and taken into an interview room. Morrison was waiting for him. After Collingwood had gone through the usual preliminaries, Morrison told O’Reilly he was under arrest on suspicion of aiding and abetting Kurt Neilson in the murder of Detmar Steinburg, perverting the course of justice and assaulting Ester Langton on the night of the art show in the Steinburg gallery.

‘Right, Norman, let’s start from what happened on the night of the 14th. You have previously claimed that you were in Southampton all afternoon and evening, but we now know that was a lie. So tell us exactly what occurred that evening.’

‘Right, I had only just arrived. As far as I was concerned, I’d missed the pick-up for the crates. Then I got a call, saying it was urgent I return to London.’

‘Who was the caller?’

‘It was Kurt Neilson, and he was blazing angry because I had locked the door into the main sales room of the shop. I’d left the back door open to the yard because a market stall-holder used to leave her trestle table in the shop for her to set up on the Saturday.’

Morrison tapped the table with a pencil. ‘But you knew you were not returning that Saturday.’

‘That’s right, but I forgot, and to be honest, I was nervous because I was worried about not making it to Southampton in time for the collection. I had already had a run-in with Kurt on Friday morning. He had this cross delivered, enormous bloody thing, and it was taking up a lot of space in the shop. I had asked when it was being moved out. I never knew, you see, when I’d get a delivery of frames, they could come without any warning, and that’s another reason I left the yard gates open because they sometimes delivered them at night.’

‘Get back to the Friday, Mr O’Reilly.’

‘Right, well, he’s screaming at me that I was going to be out of a job because he’d left some important invitations in the shop when he’d been there earlier, and I was even more stressed because I’d forgotten I’d picked them up and put them into my big shoulder bag.’

‘Friday, Mr O’Reilly. I’m getting impatient.’

‘I drove straight there. I needed this job — it was good money, and I made good time; the doors to the yard were open, and I drove in. I had the keys to the front of the shop — it’s a heavy-duty lock because that’s where the good frames and paintings are kept.’

‘Which entrance are you talking about? The main door of the shop or the internal one?’

‘Both have strong locks and there’s a bolt on the main front door. Portobello Road can be a dodgy place, thieves’ll break in if you’re not careful. The back’s all storage, so leaving that open is less of a big deal really. You can’t get into the main part of the shop through the yard, you need to go through an inside, locked door.’

‘So, you were there to open the internal door, right?’

‘Yes, exactly. But Kurt had smashed in the door from the yard, so I got out of the van and walked in. He must have used a jemmy or something. Anyway, he was in there, and he looked madder than ever. I was shaking when I searched in my bag for the keys because no lights were on, and I said I’d got the invitations and...’ He paused.

‘Go on.’ Morrison leaned forwards over the table.

‘He said he needed me to do something for him. He said he had some cash, but there would be a lot more. He said he would pay fifty thousand quid if I agreed to help him. I mean, that is a lot of money. I asked how I could trust him for that amount of money, and then he switched the light on.’

If O’Reilly was acting, Morrison thought he was doing it very well as his whole body was shaking. He tried to catch his breath, opening and shutting his mouth like a fish. Morrison glanced at Collingwood as they waited.

‘The floor was covered in blood, pools of it. I mean, it was everywhere, and that’s when I saw his suit was splattered with it. He said if I cleared the place up, he’d pay me the fifty grand. There had been some sexual thing that had got out of hand...’

‘Did you see the victim?’

‘No, well, not exactly. There was a rolled-up carpet in a corner. It could have been in there.’

‘So, what happened next?’

‘I had some containers of bleach, and I got a mop and buckets and started cleaning whatever I could and then used a hose pipe that was attached to a tap in the yard. I was out in the yard brushing the water down the drain, then, when I went back in, the carpet had been moved into the main shop because he’d opened the door. I was still spraying more bleach everywhere and using the mop to wipe down the walls. It took about two hours before he was satisfied, and then he said that I’d done a good job but there was one more thing I had to do.’

O’Reilly was sweating, constantly wiping his face with the back of his hands. Morrison passed him a bottle of water. He drank a few gulps before putting the bottle down.

‘I had to get rid of the carpet, and he handed me this carrier bag full of stuff, he said not to chuck it all in the same place but to spread it around. I heaved the carpet into a dumpster in White City as I was heading back to Southampton. I was driving around looking for somewhere else and was at Shepherds Bush... there were a lot of waste bins, so I reckoned it would be as good as anywhere. I parked up and opened the back of the van. The bag was full of bloodstained clothes, and that’s when I had second thoughts. I reckoned I should keep them as evidence if Kurt didn’t pay up, so I would have a bargaining chip.’

Morrison nodded, picked up his pen and tapped the desk again. ‘So where did you get the money to pay Miss Curtis? Five hundred pounds, right?’

‘Oh, right, yes, he gave me that before I left.’

‘So, what else was in the carrier bag? Did you look through it?’

‘No, I did not. I was still scared shitless, excuse me, but I wanted to get back to Southampton.’

‘No credit cards, driving licence, no kind of identification?’

‘That’s right, and I gave Miss Curtis the money I’d promised

her later in the week after I’d hidden the bag in the dog kennel out in my backyard because by now, I knew I was going to be in big trouble about what had gone down in the shop. You know, Kurt had always been helpful, and we got on because, in the old days, I’d done a bit of boxing, not in his league, he was a middle-weight and could have been a champion, used to be known as The Panther, the way he moved like a dancer. But on his first big amateur fight before turning pro he got, not a really hard punch, but more of a winger to his jaw and he was out like a light. They found out he’d got a glass chin, so that was the end of his fight career. With his looks, I think he did some modelling, but I also knew not to question him on all the money he flashed around, ’cause he could turn on you and get very nasty.’ He paused as if thinking something over. ‘I suppose that was what happened to the bloke in the carpet.’

Laura had been waiting for Jack in the incident room for half an hour, but he was still in DCI Clarke’s office. Why had Jack been looking at that case file? Had he also recognised Adam Border? She recalled how the case had finally been closed, when Ridley had discovered vital CCTV footage from Ireland. She couldn’t remember Jack’s part in it, but she was certain Adam Border remained on the wanted lists.

Jack eventually exited DCI Clarke’s office, but before Laura could talk to him, DI Armani appeared and instructed Laura and Jack to attend a possible murder enquiry. They were assigned different cars, frustrating her even more.

Collingwood was eager to find out how much O’Reilly knew about the gallery’s connection to art fraud. Once Morrison had finished with his questions, Collingwood asked O’Reilly about the deliveries he had made recently. He put the CCTV photo of the man with the baseball cap on the desk in front of him. O’Reilly started to look nervous.

‘I never made any personal deliveries to anyone. The crates were delivered to me with instructions about shipping them on.’ He paused, then leaned forwards pointing at the photo. ‘Him, that bloke, he was a regular, but I had a delivery to him, it was a huge painting with a gold frame.’

‘You claimed not to know him,’ Collingwood said.

‘I don’t. He came in and collected what was delivered to the shop for him and left. That was the only time I had to take a frame to him.’

‘Do you know his address?’

‘Yeah, I do, not the exact one, it was an old comprehensive school near Westbourne Grove. I unloaded it, but I wasn’t gonna help carry it in there for him, ’cause it weighed a ton and I’ve got lower back problems.’

Morrison nodded to Collingwood to organise someone to go and check out the school. He was not that interested, wanting to move the interview on to the night at the gallery. O’Reilly soon admitted he’d been there.

‘I’d run out of money. I didn’t even know there was an exhibition going on, I just wanted to ask Kurt for the money he promised. I was trying to get Ester Langton to talk to Kurt when some bloke attacked me. He looked a bit familiar but I don’t know who he was. When the police arrived, I legged it. I couldn’t think where else to go so I went and hid at the Rent-a-Van company. Frank Jones didn’t know nothing about it.

Collingwood came back in with a photograph of the now demolished school on his mobile. He held it out to O’Reilly. ‘Yeah, it looks like the place I delivered the painting to, but it hadn’t been demolished then.’

‘So, you say this man, the one in the baseball cap, was at the school. Was he waiting for the delivery?’ Collingwood asked.

‘Yeah, didn’t tip me when I got it out either.’

‘But you don’t know his name?’

‘No, like I keep sayin’, he was just a regular customer.’

Morrison had had enough of this line of questioning. ‘How well did you know Detmar Steinburg?’

‘Listen, I never met him, and I never had any dealings with him. I knew he owned galleries and was as rich as Croesus and that Kurt was his boyfriend. I knew they were perverts, you know, they liked young boys, but I just kept my nose out of their business. Like I said, I got paid well.’

Collingwood sat back, folding his arms. ‘If I was to suggest to you that your shop was dealing in fake paintings and shipping them out to Europe and the States for considerable sums of money, and that you had to have been fully aware of this illegal transaction for some time, what would you say?’

O’Reilly shook his head several times. ‘Listen to me, if I’d known there was another fucking business going on right under my fucking nose and making other people a lot of cash, I’d have been pissed off. I don’t know anything about any fake paintings, I was just a gofer, a small-time fuckwit that got caught up in that bastard’s sick murder.’

Collingwood noticed O’Reilly looking furtively down at his feet. He got up and went round the table. ‘Stand up,’ he told him. O’Reilly was wearing a pair of expensive-looking designer suede shoes.

‘They were the only things my size,’ he said plaintively.

O’Reilly was standing in the dead man’s shoes.

Morrison was tired out and wanted to get something to eat, so he went to the canteen. Collingwood took the opportunity to head up to the office used for viewing CCTV and mobile footage. Two officers, including Ralph, were still working as Collingwood walked in.

‘We’ve checked O’Reilly’s mobile phone record and verified that he did receive a call from a mobile phone belonging to Kurt Neilson at one forty-five on Friday the 14th...’

Collingwood nodded. ‘Good work. If you guys need a break, take one now. I’ll stay here with Ralph.’

He didn’t have to ask twice; everyone was tired from being glued to the monitors all morning. They hurried out as Collingwood took over one of their chairs. Ralph waited until the door closed behind them and then leaned in close.

‘About bloody time. I’ve been fending off queries all fucking day.’

‘Yeah, well, we had Norman O’Reilly in. So what’s getting your knickers in such a twist?’

‘It’s no joke, Mike... this is all footage recorded on people’s phones at the gallery.’ Ralph plugged the hard drive into a desktop computer. Collingwood leaned back in his chair as one of the screens on a bank of six lit up, with the date and time stamp. After a few moments, Collingwood sat up, his back rigid as he watched footage of Jack Warr moving down the staircase at the gallery, exiting the glass lift, moving up the staircase and trying to herd people to move downstairs.

‘Shit,’ he said softly.

‘You’ve not seen the best yet... this is from the gallery on floor three, and we’ve got four other sections from different people.’

The footage showed Kurt Neilson pulling the cover off one of his paintings, then the footage cut to Jack Warr tackling him to the ground as a gun spun away across the floor.

Collingwood sat back, feeling sick to his stomach. ‘OK, leave it with me until I’ve had time to talk to Morrison. Don’t mention it to anyone else.’

‘It’s dynamite, isn’t it? I mean, what the hell was he doing there dressed up in his monkey suit? But I have to say he was bloody controlling the mayhem.’

‘You do nothing until I tell you,’ Collingwood snapped, eager now to get out and warn Jack what was coming. He pushed his chair back as Ralph turned to him.

‘You know we got a rollicking about letting him into the ICU unit. I held my hand up about that. But after seeing this footage, I’m having second thoughts about it being a coincidence. He could be involved, Mike. I mean, Detmar Steinburg was bloody crucified...’

Collingwood slammed the door shut behind him, not wanting to listen to any more. But he had a stomach-churning feeling that Ralph was right.