Good Bait

36

Ramsden had been right about the car used in the Camden shootings, the BMW; it had been found on the upper level of a supermarket car park out at St Albans, burned to a blackened shell. The lab techs had done what they could — cyanoacrylate fuming, VMD — but to no avail. If there was a link back to Valentyn Horak, always assuming Horak and his associates had been responsible, this wasn’t it.

So far, they had had no success in discovering whatever vehicle had ferried the bodies to Stansted, nor where Horak and the others had been tortured prior to being killed. Gordon Dooley, suspected of being behind the crimes, avenging the gunning down of two of his own, was still under careful surveillance and was placing not a foot out of line. The only regular visits he made were to his ageing mother in a care home in Haywards Heath and to the chiropractor dealing with his back, spatial realignment of the spine. The only phone calls to one of his ex-wives, urging a reconsideration of the amount he was currently paying in child support, and to his bookmaker ahead of meetings at Kempton, Haydock and Southwell.

The CCTV operator who’d conveniently phoned in sick on the evening the three bodies were placed inside the airport storage unit, was still adamant that his migraine had been real, no one had got to him, no pressures exerted, no payment made. His bank account showed no unexplained sums as income; a search of the flat where he lived in Harlow had discovered no suitcases crammed with used banknotes on top of the wardrobe or under the bed. Taking up the floorboards yielded only dry rot and a small family of mice.

‘Bastard’s lying through his back teeth,’ Ramsden said and Karen thought he was right. But proving it, like so much else …

The security officer supposedly on patrol that evening had proved an easier nut to crack. Up to a certain point. Sick about it, wasn’t he? Sick to his stomach about what had happened. Never would have imagined it, never in a million years. These two fellers had approached him, he told Ramsden, just a couple of nights before. All we need you to do, they said, turn a blind eye. To what? He didn’t know to what, didn’t ask. Bit of jiggery pokery with one of the containers, he imagined. Something smuggled in. Stuff being knocked off, stripped from the manifest. If he’d thought for a moment it was going to be anything like it was …

‘How much?’ Ramsden had asked. The room a sweat box, despite the outside temperature; low ceilings, space just enough for a metal table and chairs, the only window locked fast, heating turned up deliberately high.

‘How much?’ Ramsden said again.

‘How much what?’

‘How much they drop you?’

‘I told you, nothing.’

‘Listen, you miserable little scrote, don’t fuck me around. How fuckin’ much?’

‘Couple of hundred, that’s all.’

‘And the rest.’

‘No, no, straight up.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come cheap, then, don’t you? ’Less you knew them, of course. Make more sense that. Old mates pulling a favour. That how it was?’

‘No. No, I swear.’ Sweat pouring off him like rain.

‘You did know them, though.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Never seen ’em before. Not till that night. I told you. Never.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘I told you, my oath.’

‘Your what?’

‘My oath. My word.’

Ramsden grated out a laugh. ‘Your fucking word! Not worth a fiddler’s fart and any self-respecting silk who gets you on the stand’ll have the lies stripped off you so fast you’ll be up there shivering with one hand hanging on to your scrawny balls and the other covering your arse.’ He laughed again, pushed back his chair. ‘You’re going down, you miserable little dipshit, down for a long time, unless you give me something I can use. You understand? We understood?’

‘Yes. I mean, no. I dunno. I dunno if I can.’

‘Pentonville. Brixton. The Scrubs. Aiding and abetting, that’d be the least of it. Accessory to murder, I’d say. Depends. ’Less, of course, you recognise the shit you’re in. Give us a reason for putting in a word. Show us how good you are, remembering faces, naming names.’

Head bowed, the security officer closed his eyes. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose. His voice was a whisper, little more. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Say again?’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

Ramsden allowed himself a smile. It wasn’t to last for long.

Four sessions: faces on the computer, folders of well-handled 6 x 4s, try as he might the man failed to pick out a single face, a single name. He was lying, of course, just as the CCTV operator was lying, but what could they do? The threatened possibility of a jail sentence against the embedded certainty that if he grassed sooner or later someone would use a blade on him, likely even cut his throat, in the nick or out.

In her office later, Karen read the anger, the frustration on Ramsden’s face.

‘Bastard!’ he said, slamming a fist down on to her desk. ‘Chickenshit bastard!’

‘It’ll come. You know it will. Sooner or later, it’ll come.’

Not soon enough for Burcher. True to his word, he had made more officers available, civilian support staff, too, but for that he expected results. Homicide, he had said, holding back just a little on the irony, your field of expertise. There’d been an urgent message just that morning: the Detective Chief Superintendent would appreciate a progress report ASAP. So far she hadn’t returned the call.

When the phone rang, she thought it was possibly Burcher himself, snotty and impatient, demanding action, answers.

Counting towards ten, she picked up on six.

‘We were going to have a catch-up?’ Alex Williams’ voice, pleasant, even.

‘Yes.’

‘How about this evening? Short notice, I know, but if we keep leaving it …’

‘No, this evening’s fine.’

‘You remember how to get here?’

‘I think so.’

‘Around seven, then? Seven thirty? See you then.’

‘A date?’ Ramsden said, eyebrow raised, having heard just one side of the conversation. ‘All right for some.’