The Crime Trade

18

Saturday began just like any other working day for those of us on the O’Brien case.

The Met’s detection rate for murders has come under a lot of criticism in recent years, with clear-up rates of a little over seventy per cent lagging far behind those of the rest of the country, mainly because there are too many murders and, given the trend among CID for early retirement, not enough senior detectives. So when you had an increasingly high-profile double-killing (the papers that morning had finally picked up on the fact that Robbie O’Brien was linked to the botched operation at Heathrow), those officers involved were expected to pull out all the stops.

At the murder squad meeting that morning, Flanagan informed us that he had another news conference set for eleven a.m. to try to, as he said, play down the connection between Slim Robbie and the events of Wednesday. On the one hand, such a connection raised the profile of the case and therefore made it easier to appeal to potential witnesses, but this was outweighed by the fear that those witnesses might well end up keeping quiet if they thought there was some strong ‘organized crime’ element to what had been going on. No-one wants to make themselves a target or end up lost in a witness protection programme, and Flanagan was as aware of this as anyone, and was acting accordingly. I also don’t suppose he was vastly keen on the idea of an intrepid reporter finding out that the man who’d led and planned Operation Surgical Strike was also the one leading the O’Brien murder inquiry, but his demeanour (tenser and more strained than it had been the previous day) suggested that he didn’t discount it as a possibility.

However, he was also excited about our new and potentially ground-breaking lead: the first description of the killer. At last we had something to go on. ‘We’re going to bring the witness in this morning to see if we can get some sort of e-fit together,’ he explained. ‘I don’t know how good a likeness we’re going to get, she didn’t see him for long, but you never know. As soon as we’ve got something, we’ll knock on every door within a quarter-mile radius and see if the face rings any bells. I’ve been promised the use of thirty uniforms, but even so it’s going to take a while. There’s a lot of houses in that part of Islington.’

Next, Flanagan moved on to the material I’d spotted hanging from the rusty nail. Apparently, there wasn’t much of it, but tests at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Lambeth were still continuing to see if there was any way of identifying the make, and therefore where it might have been sold. ‘They haven’t been able to pinpoint it yet,’ he told us, ‘and even the forensics guys aren’t miracle workers. It was only about an inch of cloth, and that’s not a lot to go on, but it is top priority down there.’

Flanagan was right, it wasn’t a lot to go on, but at least on this case the resources were going to be there.

The meeting continued with members of the squad bandying about ideas for widening the search and trying to see if there was any angle we hadn’t covered yet. I mentioned the weapon used. ‘Is it possible it was used before? Has anyone checked HOLMES to see if it might have been?’

As yet, no-one had, though Flanagan wasn’t especially confident that it was going to turn up anything, particularly as we’d yet to recover the gun itself. ‘He was a pro, the man who did this, as much as anyone who kills people is a pro. But the point is, he’s been careful all the way down the line so I can’t see him using a dirty weapon. It will need to be checked out, though, just in case the bullets used can be matched with any that have been fired in separate incidents. I know that the Forensic Science Service did ballistics tests at the crime scene. Speak to Roy Catherwood down at Lambeth, can you? He’s the one who’ll be in charge of documenting all the results.’

I said I would.

‘Also, sir,’ said Tina, ‘if he is a pro, then he’s going to have done something like this before, isn’t he?’

Flanagan nodded severely, not even looking at her. ‘Good thinking,’ he said, which, with him, was about the best compliment you were going to get. ‘Take a look through HOLMES, see if there’s any other killings with the same MO in London in the past three years, and if any of them throw up a description of the killer.’

Tina said she would, then brought up what she’d found out about Stegs Jenner’s partnership with Jeff Benson, his former colleague in SO10, and how it had ended with the latter’s cover being blown. ‘It’s possible he betrayed a colleague once, so he could easily have done it again. Which means he’s got be worth considering as a suspect for leaking the details of Operation Surgical Strike.’

Flanagan nodded, not looking too displeased with what Tina had said, which wasn’t surprising. ‘Mr Jenner still has some questions to answer, but at the moment we haven’t got an adequate motive for him, or any real evidence. Keep digging, though, and something might come up. And that goes for all of you. Keep digging. We’re unearthing clues. They might be few and far between, but the harder we work at it, the more we’ll turn up.’

So dig we did. I didn’t see much of Tina that weekend. We were like ships passing in the night. When she wasn’t on HOLMES, the police major inquiries database, going through old cases, she was involved in tracking down local Islington-based informants to see if they could throw any light on a possible relationship between Robbie O’Brien and Nicholas Tyndall and his associates — not that she had a great deal of success.

Meanwhile, the internal investigation into what had happened at Heathrow was also gathering pace, and I was contacted by DCS8, Scotland Yard’s successor to the Complaints Investigation Bureau, or CIB, to set up a meeting, which was arranged for Monday. I’d heard from Malik that they’d pretty much exonerated Flanagan already, since it seemed he’d done everything he could to ensure that the op had run smoothly, and it made me wonder whether they were going to end up concluding that somehow O’Brien had found out the venue and had simply sold that information on, which seemed just a little bit convenient for me.

By late Saturday afternoon there was a further breakthrough in the case. The material left behind on the rusty nail had yielded results. It turned out that it contained a tiny portion of the jacket’s inner label, and an eagle-eyed employee had identified it as belonging to Louis Desmarches, a suit manufacturer whose clothing was only sold through a fairly small and supposedly exclusive number of retail outlets. After further tests to determine the dyes and materials used in the manufacture of the suit, the FSS had contacted Desmarches to see if they could identify the batch from which it had come. Although there wasn’t enough evidence to specify the exact batch, it was possible, the company’s representative explained, to state categorically that the material recovered from the crime scene belonged to a Desmarches charcoal-grey suit jacket (it could have been either single- or double-breasted) manufactured between March 2001 and December 2002. A list of outlets that sold such suits in the Greater London area was immediately despatched from Desmarches to the FSS, and then from the FSS to us.

You always need a little luck in any murder investigation, and it seemed we’d got some here. Not a huge amount, granted, but no copper worth his or her salt minds putting in the hours when you’re actually heading in the right direction.

For my part, then, much of the weekend entailed working with a number of other officers from the team contacting those outlets (many of which, being London-based, were open on Sundays) and getting hold of the records of sales made of those particular suits, and the names of the purchasers. At the same time, I was chasing Roy Catherwood, one of the FSS’s senior firearms consultants at Lambeth, for anything he could give me on the bullets found at the scene of the murder. Not surprisingly, given that he was dealing with the use of guns in the commission of crime throughout Greater London, he was extremely busy, plus he liked to have a bit of time off now and again, so progress in that quarter was slower than I would have liked.

By ten o’clock on Monday morning it had been confirmed that 104 suits matching the description given by the Desmarches representative had been sold in Greater London since they’d first gone on sale in March 2001, and now the task of tracking down the purchasers began. Like I said earlier, there’s a lot of legwork, and no shortage of dead-ends either. I was spared getting involved in this last lot, however, by my interview with DCS8, which took place at Scotland Yard that morning, and by what happened immediately afterwards.

It was half-twelve when I got back to the station, and I was hungry. I phoned Tina to see if she was in the vicinity and wanted to meet up for lunch, but she wasn’t answering, so I made my way up to the incident room. It was nearly empty, with only a handful of detectives and support staff in front of their PCs, but I spotted Malik among them and was just about to ask if he fancied popping out for a pie and a pint when my desk extension rang.

‘Good timing,’ I said, striding over and picking it up.

I recognized the voice at the other end straight away. I’d never met Roy Catherwood but could tell from the shortness of breath and the gravel in his voice that he was both a heavy smoker and a big eater, and probably not destined for a hundredth-birthday telegram from the Queen. He was a nice enough guy, though, and engagingly jovial, as is more common than people think among those who work in the science of violent death.

‘Hello, Roy,’ I said, crossing my fingers, though more in hope than in expectation. ‘Have you got anything for me?’

‘Do you know what?’ he rasped in reply. ‘I think I actually do.’

He sounded as surprised as me. He hadn’t been all that hopeful that without the gun itself it would be possible to tell whether it had actually been used before, particularly as all three slugs recovered from the murder scene had been badly damaged by the impact of being fired point-blank through human bone and tissue.

‘Well, go on.’

‘I’ve been checking through our database of.38 bullets fired in the commission of crimes for the past year, and there’s a case — a recent one at that — that stands out.’ I didn’t say anything so he continued. ‘A domestic incident over in Paddington a couple of weeks back. Someone — it says here, a man — fired a shot into the ceiling of a flat while in dispute with its tenant, a woman he’d apparently been having a relationship with. I’ve checked the striation marks between our bullets and the bullet that was recovered from the ceiling and they’re remarkably similar — so similar, in fact, that I’m convinced they came from the same gun.’

The striation marks on a bullet are the microscopic scratches caused by imperfections on the surface of the interior of a gun’s barrel that are unique to each individual firearm, and act as its calling card. The same striation marks will appear on a bullet every time a particular gun is fired.

‘If the incident had been months ago, I don’t know if I’d have spotted it,’ he continued. ‘At least not for a while anyway. It’s because I was working backwards, and it was so recent, that I did.’

‘How sure are you?’ I asked, thinking that this didn’t quite sound right. A hitman using his weapon in a domestic dispute?

‘Very,’ he answered with a wheeze and a huff. ‘All the cartridges involved are badly damaged, but there’s no mistaking it. I’d say that the match is ninety-nine per cent. Not good enough for some courts of law, unfortunately, but it ought to be something to be going along with. I’ve got the name of the DI involved in the case if you want it.’

‘That’d be great. Thanks, Roy.’

He gave me the number and I thanked him again, saying I’d be back in touch shortly.

‘Yeah, I bet,’ he snorted. ‘That’s what they all say.’

I got straight through to DI Seamus Daly at Paddington Green nick and he gave me a rundown of what had happened. ‘The name of the shooter, or alleged shooter as he’ll have you believe, is Robert Panner. He’s a small-time pimp — a bit of an Ali G type, a white man who thinks he’s black — who operates round Paddington station. He’d been in a relationship of sorts with the tenant of the flat, a Miss Fiona Ragdale, and had her on the streets earning for him. Apparently, she’d been trying to quit, there’d been some arguments, and then one night a couple of weeks back he turned up and put a bullet in the ceiling. She called us, but he went AWOL and we didn’t catch up with him until last week. He was nicked, but any sulphur traces from the gun on his fingers had disappeared. He’s on bail at the moment, pending further enquiries.’

‘What about the gun itself?’

‘Couldn’t find it, and Panner denied everything. Said it must have been someone else, and I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to get charges to stick. It’s his word against hers, and she’s been on the pipe and got a few convictions of her own, so she’s not exactly reliable.’

I told Daly the nature of the case we were investigating and asked him if he thought Panner could possibly be the shooter.

‘Well, the description fits roughly. He’s about the right age, he’s got black hair and he’s definitely a nasty bit of work. He’s got a record for theft, drugs, and ABH and GBH, so he’s definitely capable of some serious violence.’

‘But?’

‘But he’s small-time, and a bit of a dopehead to boot. In the end, I can’t see anyone hiring him for an important murder. He might have the right temperament, but I can’t see him shooting dead two people, then being savvy enough to tidy up for himself afterwards. He’s a typical criminal really. Not very bright, and fairly predictable.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said, then asked him a few more questions and arranged to fax over the e-fit of our suspect for comparison, before ringing off.

Malik had come over and was leaning against my desk. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

‘A lead, but I’m not sure where it’s going to take us.’ I told him briefly what I’d heard while he listened in silence.

He looked pleased. ‘Well, let’s have a look at him. Bring his details up on the system and see how well he matches the e-fit.’

I logged on to the PNC database, fed in the relevant details Daly had given me and, after a few seconds, the black and white mugshot of a young man with a thin, pallid face, defiant eyes and unkempt, greasy black hair stared back at me. At first glance it looked as if he was snarling at the camera, but on closer inspection I could see that he had a harelip. A wispy, untidy moustache did little to conceal it.

‘Nice-looking lad.’ Malik chuckled.

‘It’s amazing,’ I said. ‘He couldn’t be anything but a criminal. Whoever said you should never judge a book by its cover should come here and take a look at this guy.’

‘But is he our man?’

‘I don’t remember the e-fit of the suspect being this ugly.’

Malik stepped across to his desk, picked up a hardcopy of the suspect e-fit and put it up next to Panner on the screen. It wasn’t exactly a close match, but the hair colour, age and facial features were similar, although the hairstyle (if you could call Panner’s dishevelled mop a style) was markedly different. The e-fit suspect’s hair was curlier and shorter.

We both stared at the two pictures for a moment. ‘Inconclusive,’ said Malik eventually. ‘It says here that Panner’s five feet nine inches, which fits within the witness’s height range, but it’s difficult to tell.’

‘If they are one and the same then she was being very flattering in her description.’

‘We don’t know how good her eyesight is. Are you and Tina going to check this lead out?’

‘I can’t get hold of her at the moment. I know she’s got a lot on. How about you coming with me?’

‘I’ve got a lot on myself.’

‘Come on. We could do with some quality time together.’

‘The last time I spent quality time with you was Heathrow last week, and five people ended up shot.’

‘Well, it can only be an improvement, then.’ I stood up. ‘Let’s grab a bite first. I’m starving.’

‘All right,’ he said, putting the hardcopy back on his desk. ‘It’s a good enough lead to warrant some effort, I suppose.’

We took a bit of a stroll and went to a pub called the Dragon which served good food all day, according to the sign outside the door. I bought Malik an orange juice and, trusting him not to give me any trouble over it, a pint of Greene Man for myself. We also ordered our food, going Dutch this time (I don’t get paid enough to be too generous), then found ourselves a table by the door. I plumped for the lasagne, with a green salad; Malik, the homemade steak and kidney pie with veg and mash.

‘So,’ he said, watching me take a healthy mouthful of beer, ‘have you got an address for Panner?’

I nodded. ‘If he’s no longer there, he’ll be in breach of his probation. I’ve got the victim’s, Ragdale’s, address on there too. Perhaps she could throw some light on whether or not he’s a hitman on the side.’

‘If he is, he’s not a very good one.’

‘That’s my concern, because I’m sure our man is. But three weeks ago Panner was in possession of that gun. So at the very least he can point us in the right direction.’

Malik nodded. ‘Tell me something,’ he said, sitting back in his seat and giving me a smile. ‘Are you and Tina Boyd an item?’

His question caught me completely off guard, which I suppose it was designed to, and I made the mistake of hesitating for a second. ‘No, course not,’ I said lamely. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘There’s something in the way you look at each other. It’s very subtle, but it’s there for definite. Either you’re an item, or you definitely fancy her like mad. It’s one or the other.’ He sipped his orange knowingly.

‘I fancy her,’ I said with a smile. ‘But as far as I know, the feeling’s not mutual.’

‘It is, I think.’

‘Christ, who are you? Dr Ruth? Our relationship is purely platonic, I promise you. I always keep my working relationships above board, it’s a long-standing habit of mine.’ I felt bad lying to him, because we got on well and I’d come to count on him as a friend in the time since we’d met on the Holtz case, but I knew it would be more than my life’s worth for Tina to find out I’d let the cat out of the bag.

‘It’s a pity,’ he said. ‘I think you’d make a good couple. You look right together.’

‘Thank you, Cupid.’

‘I’m serious. You do. Maybe you should think about it. A relationship’d do you good.’

‘What do you mean?’

He was about to answer and give me another piece of domestic advice when his mobile rang. He pulled it out and started talking, getting up from the table at the same time and walking out the door. I watched him go, taking another drink of my beer and thinking that usually I didn’t like being lectured by anyone, particularly colleagues, but with Malik I was prepared to make an exception. Mainly because I could tell he genuinely meant what he said, and was motivated by all the right reasons. In fact, I’d wanted to come right out and tell him that Tina and I were together and were very happy too, because I knew it would please him, but the moment was gone, and maybe that was for the best. I wasn’t sure I liked the comment that a relationship would do me good, though. Especially as I was in one.

‘Anything interesting?’ I asked him when he came back a couple of minutes later.

He sat down and put the phone away. ‘Your friend and mine, Mr Jack Merriweather. Apparently, he wants conjugal visits.’

Jack Merriweather. Now there was someone I hadn’t thought about in a while. Thanks to Malik’s and my efforts, he was currently behind bars in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh prison, and was to be the main prosecution witness in the upcoming trial of a number of associates of the Holtz crime family, including its most senior surviving member, Neil Vamen. Merriweather had been a Holtz man through and through, and had only escaped a very long prison sentence because he’d agreed to testify against his old friends and bosses.

‘He wants conjugal visits? Who from?’

‘His mistress, apparently. A hatchet-faced blonde called Cheryl who’s older than he is and about as attractive as our man Panner.’

‘Christ, that’s saying something.’

‘Believe me, it’s true. Apparently, he’s been seeing her for years, and she hasn’t been put off by his latest predicament.’

‘He’s not going to get visits just like that, is he? That really would damage what’s left of my faith in the criminal justice system.’

Malik shook his head. ‘Apart from anything else, it’d be too much of a security risk.’

‘What do you mean?’

He leant forward, lowering his voice. ‘Between you and me, Merriweather’s no longer in Belmarsh. He’s in a safe house. Has been for the past two weeks. Ever since someone tried to kill him.’

‘So Vamen hasn’t thrown in the towel just yet?’

‘Did you think he would? Men like him are survivors, John. They don’t give up until they’re underground. Vamen wants Merriweather out of the way, and he’s going to keep trying until he’s succeeded.’

‘Is Merriweather all right?’

He nodded. ‘He was lucky, though. It was a very near miss. A paedophile on the same segregation wing attacked him with a sharpened lamb chop bone, of all things. Tried to jam it in his neck while they were out in the exercise yard. He managed to slash him but Merriweather’s quite handy with his fists and he managed to fight the guy off until the warders broke it up.’

‘A lamb chop?’ That was certainly a new one.

‘If the attacker had got a clean shot, and some power behind it, it could easily have killed him. It was solid bone.’

‘It’s not exactly hi-tech. Was it definitely an organized hit?’

‘The assailant’s not saying anything, but it was a completely unprovoked attack, and there was no history at all between the two of them. And that’s not the end of it. While Merriweather was recovering in the prison hospital someone put ground glass in his food. Luckily for him his appetite had been affected by what had happened, and the stuff they were feeding him wasn’t exactly gourmet, so he only had a couple of bites. He didn’t like the taste, said there was something wrong with it, and spat the stuff out. That’s when someone put two and two together and checked it. They found enough in there to have ripped his insides to shreds. And it was professionally ground down as well, almost into dust. He could have eaten a fair bit without realizing what was wrong. Whoever was behind it took a lot of trouble getting it ready.’

I sighed, concerned by what I was hearing. You think that when you’ve nicked someone and built a decent case against them, then that’s pretty much that. But in reality all we had against Vamen was the testimony of Jack Merriweather and those handful of witnesses prepared to follow his example and point their fingers at him for past crimes. If Merriweather was silenced, then so would they be, you could bank on it. And without them there was nothing like enough evidence to secure a conviction.

‘So, he’s not got any second thoughts about testifying?’

‘He’s doing fine now we’ve got him out of Belmarsh and into a nice little pad in the country. He’s moaning that he wants every creature comfort going, and even Cheryl to come and play happy families, but he’s holding up, and that’s the main thing. This is classified information, though, John. Only a handful of people know about it, and even fewer are aware of the location. Don’t mention any of it to anyone. Not even Tina.’

‘I won’t. I promise.’

A plump girl carrying two plates of steaming food came out from behind the bar and shouted out our number. I lifted my hand to acknowledge her and she came over and dumped them down in front of us.

We ate largely in silence, both of us hungry, but as I finished, a thought suddenly struck me. ‘Do you think what’s happening with Merriweather’s got anything to do with our case?’ I pushed my empty plate to one side. ‘I mean, there’s what Tina found out about Stegs Jenner and his possible involvement with the Holtzes. If he was somehow involved in the leaking of the Heathrow op. .’

Malik didn’t look convinced. ‘There’s no evidence against Jenner, nothing at all, and he seems to be co-operating fully. Plus, as Flanagan points out, there is the problem of motive.’

I nodded slowly, thinking. I’d been doing a lot of thinking these past few days. ‘But there could be a motive if we assume that Stegs is still working for the Holtzes, or at least for Neil Vamen.’

Malik’s eyes narrowed. ‘Explain.’

‘Well, say, Stegs uses O’Brien to set up the robbery at the airport hotel, knowing full well the robbers’ll get caught, thus implicating their boss, Nicholas Tyndall, and causing him no end of trouble — that would be a very nice outcome for Neil Vamen, wouldn’t it? A potentially very serious rival in the shit, which is effectively what’s happened, and if he can get rid of Merriweather at the same time, a chance to be back out on the streets and in complete charge of his old manor.’

Malik thought about it for a few moments, taking the odd pensive sip of his orange juice, which seemed to be lasting an unfeasibly long time. ‘Part of it fits, but there are still unanswered questions,’ he said eventually. ‘Such as, why would Stegs put himself in such a dangerous position, which he undoubtedly did, for someone like Vamen? Also, we’re assuming that Vamen’s positive he’s going to get out of jail, otherwise why would he bother trying to set up Tyndall? And why put his old friends, the Colombians, out of business?’

I finished my pint and placed the glass carefully on the table. ‘Something’s going down, though, Asif. I’m sure of it.’