Good Bait

23

By the time Karen arrived the street was cordoned off from below the crossroads north to the junction with Arlington Road. Uniformed officers, yellow tape, police vehicles in abundance.

The lights over the Jazz Cafe still stood out brightly, but the blue shades had been pulled down low across the windows and the interior was dark. People stood around in twos and threes outside the immediate cordon, stunned, too stunned to go home; talking in an abstracted, desultory way, some of them, to officers with notebooks at the ready. Ronny Jordan had departed long since, the short journey from dressing room to limo, from limo to his hotel.

Karen knew the senior officer on the scene, a detective inspector from Albany Street who’d been pulling a late shift when he’d taken the call. Blue-black raincoat, thinning hair, heavily lidded eyes; hands in pockets, his voice gravelly from too many cigarettes, too little rest.

‘It’s a bastard,’ the DI said.

Two dead, one at the scene, a single bullet to the head; the other, gunned down as he ran, had been shot three times, twice in the chest, once in the neck. He had bled out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. DOA.

‘A real bastard.’

Karen agreed.

She found Carla sitting in a huddle of clothes in the entrance to the Odeon cinema opposite, leaning back against the wall. One of the attendants had fetched her a cup of sweet tea and tissues to wipe the blood from her face. It still clung here and there to her skin, tendrils of her hair.

The moment Karen approached, she burst into tears.

Karen squeezed her shoulders, gripped both hands hard.

‘I told you, didn’t I?’ Carla said, forcing out a smile. ‘I told you you’d be missing something.’

Karen squatted down beside her. ‘You okay?’

‘What’s it look like?’

‘You weren’t hit?’

‘Just frightened out my fucking wits.’

‘And you didn’t see …?’

‘I didn’t see anything. Just this guy, the one, you know …’

Carla clenched her eyes closed and he was still falling towards her, only slowly now, slowly as if through water, and she was reaching out to catch him, because, automatically, it’s what you do, and, just for a moment, he was there in her arms, safe, then gone.

‘Just the guy who got shot,’ she said, recovering. ‘Nothing else. Not the … the shooter. Is that what you call him? The shooter? Too many of those cop shows, you learn the language, the lingo.’

‘The gunman, maybe,’ Karen said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Either way, I didn’t see him. Not really. Just someone ducking away, back towards the car.’

Karen nodded. Knew she didn’t need to ask Carla about the car itself, there’d be descriptions of that by the dozen, too many, too many of them conflicting. The gunman, the same. The man behind the wheel. Too many witnesses as against too few.

‘I’ll organise a driver,’ Karen said. ‘Get you home. Sometime tomorrow, you’ll need to come in, make a statement.’

‘No. Let me wait here for you. I don’t think I can face going home on my own.’

‘Here, then.’ Karen reached into her bag and took out her keys. ‘Take these. Go back to my place, wait for me there. I’ll have someone run you over. Get out of those clothes, shower, get some sleep. I’ll get back as soon as I can.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure. There’s a spare set of keys at the office, I’ll pick them up on the way.’

Karen bent quickly and kissed the top of her head.

‘See you later.’

It was close to four in the morning by the time Karen finally got back to her flat, later than she’d intended. Carla was curled up in her bed, wearing an old pair of borrowed pyjamas and snoring lightly. Karen tiptoed back out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. Hot chocolate. Toast and jam. The initial work at the scene complete, the local DI had been only too pleased to pass the investigation along to Karen and her team — Homicide, that’s you, after all. More aggravation than he needed. On the settee, Karen made the mistake of closing her eyes and was asleep within moments.

She woke less than an hour later; threw the uneaten toast into the bin, poured cold chocolate down the sink and swilled out the mug; swallowed down two Ibuprofen with water; swiftly showered; changed. She thought twice about waking Carla, who was still sleeping, out to the world, and finally decided against it. Left her a note instead. Later in the day, she’d seize a minute, phone or text, arrange for her to come in and make a statement, make sure she was okay.

Less than an hour later, she and Mike Ramsden were in her office, going over what they knew, what they needed to know, what needed to be done.

The vehicle used, most witnesses seemed to agree, was a black BMW X5, the registration less certain, save an agreement on the numbers 233. CCTV was being monitored, a selection of possible registrations had been sent to DVLA in Swansea; high-end hire-car firms were already being checked.

The individual responsible for the deaths of both men — the gunman, the shooter — had been variously described as shortish, tall, of medium height, slim and stockily built. Dark haired, save for one witness who had him wearing a beret and another who swore blind he was bald, and dark skinned. You mean black? No, not black. Asian. Not Asian? Middle Eastern, then? No, not that either. Swarthy, that was the word. Dark skinned, like I said before. White, but dark skinned. European.

The man shot dead on the pavement alongside Carla had been identified from the contents of his wallet as Aaron Johnson. The second victim had no ID on him whatsoever: no credit cards or driving licence, no mobile phone — all of that suspicious in itself.

Aaron Johnson, forty-three years old, an address in Lewisham: one of the half-dozen or so names Tim Costello had come up with when he was checking out Terry Martin’s associates.

Killed with a single shot to the head.

A gang hit, had to be.

Yet, according to his record, Johnson had served only a couple of brief spells inside, neither more than eighteen months, petty thieving, robbery; one charge of unlawful wounding had been shunted aside before it came to court, another of aggravated burglary was dropped when both witnesses suffered a convenient amnesia. Nothing that suggested heavy gang involvement, the kind of retribution that had been meted out here.

Perhaps, Karen thought, he was stepping up. Out of his league.

She called Gerry Stine, the Intelligence Support officer who’d proved so useful in helping identify Petru Andronic’s body at the beginning of the year. After listening for several minutes, Stine cut across what Karen was saying. ‘Afraid you’re priming the wrong man. Little off my field of expertise. But if you want a better suggestion, I can field a few names.’

The one Karen lighted on first was Warren Cormack, a DCI within the Project Team of Serious and Organised Crime Command, SCD7, which dealt, according to the rubric, with multi-dimensional crime groups, ethnically composed gangs and proactive contracts to kill. She’d heard one or two good things about him in the past; now was the time to see if they were true.

His office phone directed her to his mobile, which instructed her to leave a message, the voice just this side of brusque. Give him a couple of hours, Karen thought, then move down to the next name on the list.

Less than an hour later, Cormack called her back. He’d heard about the Camden shooting; thinking it almost certainly gang related he had started making a few preliminary inquiries himself.

‘Still no ID on the second hit?’ he asked.

‘Not so far.’

‘Description?’

‘Caucasian male, aged between thirty and thirty-five, medium height, dark hair, blue-grey eyes. That’s about all.’

‘No identifying marks? Scars? Tattoos?’

‘Not a one.’

‘Dental records?’

‘Nothing so far.’

‘Innocent bystander.’

‘Could be.’

‘Lived a clear and blameless life.’

‘Why run?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

She could hear faint traffic sounds, as if Cormack were standing near an open window. Run?Yes, she’d run. Run, duck, hide. But would the gunman risk identification and possible capture if his prime target was already down?

‘Tell you what,’ Cormack said, ‘send across some pictures, head and shoulders, full face, profile, you know the kind of thing. I’ll get them fed into the system, see what emerges.’

‘How long?’

‘Check that through? Might strike lucky. This time tomorrow? Don’t come up with anything by then, I’m probably not going to be able to help.’

‘Thanks, anyway,’ Karen said. But he’d already rung off.