Confessions of a Police Constable (29 page)

‘Fuck
that
for a sack of cow's testicles,' Pete said colourfully (if slightly zoologically inaccurately). ‘The lift's broken, isn't it?'

He took a step back, and gave the door an almighty kick. It creaked, but stubbornly resisted the attack. Pete kicked again, and this time the door flew open. In the blow, the top hinge had become loose as well, so as the door flew inwards, it swayed back and forth briefly, before the screws came loose from the rotten wood at the bottom and the whole door went tumbling inwards to the floor with a crash.

‘Whoops,' Pete said, mirthlessly, stepping aside for one of us to enter the house. Bernard and I stared at each other dumbly, neither sure as to who was going to go in first.

‘Pansies,' Pete mumbled, and made his way in first. Bernard followed him.

‘Mike Delta from five-nine-two,' I transmitted quickly. ‘We've just breached the door to the premises of our last assigned. Going in now.'

‘Received,' came the reply.

At least, if they never heard from us again, they'd know where to start looking for our corpses. I followed the others into the apartment.

The door on the far side of the hallway opened and a young, slim black man dressed only in poorly fitting briefs came out of his room, shouting something in a language none of us understood, presumably at the other occupants of the flat.

‘Police!' Pete shouted, as if being a six-foot-six Metropolitan Police uniform-clad man didn't make that clear enough. ‘We are looking for Stéphane. Please stay where you are.'

The three of us proceeded along the narrow hallway quickly, checking room by room to make sure nobody could run out or vanish out of a window. In the kitchen, we found the man I had seen through the letterbox. He had dropped his towel, and was only moderately successful in preserving his modesty with a small frying pan. Bernard burst out laughing and threw the man his towel.

‘Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh,' he said. ‘Don't worry, cover yourself up, we just want a chat with you.'

The man accepted the towel, wrapped it around himself and stood there, still holding the frying pan.

‘Come with me,' Bernard said, pointing to the door of the kitchen. The man looked confused, and shrugged.

‘Please, this way,' I said.

Bernard gently took the frying pan out of the man's hand and led him by the arm out of the kitchen and into the small living room across the hallway.

Bernard's action was the result of many a hard-learned lesson: kitchens are not good places to talk to people who may be about to get arrested. Apart from the frying pan the man had already been holding, I had counted at least six large knives, a meat cleaver and a couple of other potential weapons in the room. I don't know about you, but if I had to choose between being hit with a cast-iron skillet or a sofa cushion, I know what
my
preference is going to be.

‘What's your name?' Bernard asked after we had walked into the living room and encouraged the man to sit down in the sofa.

‘What?'

‘Your name,' Bernard tried again. ‘What is it?'

‘What?'

‘Name,' Bernard continued tirelessly.

‘My … Name … Is … Bernard,' he added, pointing at his own chest and prodding his Metvest with every syllable. Then, he pointed at the man. ‘Your Name Is …?'

‘Uh?'

Bernard fished his handcuffs out of their holster.

‘If I am not happy that I know who you are, I'm going to arrest you' – he jangled his handcuffs in the air – ‘on suspicion of assault, to ascertain your identity properly.'

Suddenly the man remembered his name.

‘Charles,' he said. ‘My name is Charles.'

‘See,' Bernard replied, sardonically. ‘That wasn't so hard, was it? Do you have any ID, Charles?'

It appeared that Charles' command of the English language had improved drastically since the beginning of their exchange.

‘Yeah, I do,' he said. ‘It is in my room.'

‘Which one is your room?'

He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.

Bernard nodded. ‘Where in your room?'

‘Night stand,' he said. ‘Drawer.'

‘Would you mind waiting here for me? Is it okay if I go find your ID for you?' Bernard said.

Charles nodded, and I waited around with him until Bernard returned waving a passport. Meanwhile, Pete was standing, wide-legged, blocking the exit of anyone who might try to leave the house and at the same time keeping an eye on the man in briefs.

‘When were you born, Charles?' Bernard said.

‘September fourteenth, nineteen seventy-three,' he replied.

‘Where?'

‘Senegal.'

‘Where in Senegal?'

‘Kaolack.'

‘Has anybody ever told you that you don't look a lot like your passport photo?' Bernard asked him, as he passed me the small booklet.

It was one of the old-style passports, where the passport photos were essentially just stapled into place with fancy-looking staples. I looked at the passport closely: it was well worn, but I couldn't really tell whether it was genuine or not; and even if I had been an expert on Senegalese identification documents, I still wouldn't have been able to tell whether the photo had been replaced or not.

Pete had moved further into the flat, and by the sound of things, he was asking similar questions of the other man. A few moments later, Pete brought the second man into the living room. Based on the man's irate tirade, I reasoned that there was nothing wrong with his language skills.

‘Flat's clear,' Pete concluded, as he pushed the man brusquely into the living room. ‘This guy is a live one.'

‘What the hell is this, man?' the man said. ‘You broke our fucking door!'

‘Why didn't you open up?' Pete asked.

‘I was afraid,' he said.

‘Of the police?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Why?'

The man didn't reply.

‘Anyway, Charles, I just wanted to …' Pete said.

‘Wait a minute,' Bernard interrupted, pointing at the man we had found in the kitchen. ‘I thought
you
were called Charles'.

‘We are both called Charles,' the second man snapped, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

We spent the next 20 minutes running both Charleses' details through the police databases. Bernard's Charles came back with a match.

‘Have you ever been arrested, Charles?' Bernard said.

Both men immediately shook their heads.

We spent another 45 minutes going back and forth, before reaching the unlikely but apparently accurate conclusion that both these men really were called Charles. And, yes, Bernard's Charles' name really was Charles Ba, but there was another Charles Ba, with the exact same birthday and place of birth, who had been arrested after he had been suspected of a hit-and-run offence in Essex three years prior. It turns out that the Essex-based Charles Ba had a distinctive scar on his face, but our London-based Charles Ba didn't.

You can't make this stuff up.

By the time we had finally cleared up that the two people we were talking to were who they said, the three of us had been in the flat for what felt like roughly an eternity.

‘So …' Bernard said to our duet of Charleses ‘… we are here to find Stéphane Nguimgo. Do you guys know who he is?'

They shook their heads in perfect unison.

‘This house has three bedrooms; there are only two of you here. Who lives in the third bedroom?'

‘Nobody,' Pete's Charles volunteered.

‘Mate, don't have a laugh. It's quite obvious that someone lives there, there's stuff there.'

‘Nobody lives there.'

‘Seriously?'

‘Nobody. It's a guest room.'

‘Do you have a visitor at the moment?'

‘No.'

‘So there is nobody living in that room?'

‘No.'

‘Charles, how much rent do you pay?'

‘Eh?'

‘Rent. The money you pay to live here,' Bernard continued. By now, it was quite clear that both our Charles-named friends spoke absolutely fluent English, but they continued to ‘forget' even simple words when it suited them. This happens all the time when questioning people, and can be extremely frustrating. I guess this is why Bernard had taken the lead in talking to the men: I've never met a more patient officer in my life.

‘How much do you pay in rent?' he repeated.

‘Eighty pounds per week.'

‘How long have you been living here?'

‘About five years.'

‘Do you pay the same?' Bernard turned to the other Charles.

He nodded.

‘So between the two of you, you pay about a hundred and sixty pounds per week? For this place?'

Charles Ba nodded, but with less conviction this time.

‘Mate, this is a pretty good apartment. It's not council, is it?'

He shook his head.

‘Who is your landlord?'

He shrugged: ‘I don't know.'

‘You don't know who your landlord is?'

‘No.'

‘How do you pay him?'

‘Cash, every week.'

‘How?'

‘How?' the man echoed.

‘Yes,' Bernard said, and I sensed his patience was beginning to fray. ‘Do you meet him somewhere? Does he come here?'

‘We send it in the mail.'

‘You send cash in the mail?'

‘Yes.'

‘And it never goes missing in the mail?'

‘No.'

‘Ever?'

‘No.'

‘You're lucky, then. I wouldn't generally recommend sending cash in the mail, you know. Not a good idea.'

‘To what address do you send the rent money?' Bernard continued.

‘I can't remember.'

‘Who normally pays the rent?'

‘Me.'

‘So you've lived here for five years, paid your rent every week, and sent it in the mail every week? So you've written down this address more than two hundred and fifty times, but you can't remember what it is, or who your landlord is?'

‘Yes?' the man answered with the most obvious lie of the day yet.

Clearly, there was something really weird going on – the flat we were in was in a pretty dodgy estate, for sure, but the flat itself was pretty nice; it was close to a tube station and local shops. There was no way they were paying £160 per week for this place. Now, if there was a third person involved who shared the rent duties, bringing the total to £240 per week, or about a grand per month in total … well, that would still have been cheap, but it sounded more likely.

‘I don't believe you,' Bernard said, completely straight-faced. I stifled a chuckle.

‘Hey, guys …' Pete said, as he walked back into the living room. To my embarrassment, that was the first time I had noticed he had left it in the first place.

There was a small, neatly stacked pile of mail in his hands. I looked at the top envelope in the stack. It was addressed to S. Nguimgo.

‘What's this?' I asked Team Charles.

‘I don't know,' Pete's Charles lied.

Pete looked through the stack.

‘They are bills and letters …' he said, as he was going through the stack. ‘All addressed to S or Stéphane … The newest one was post-marked two days ago, the oldest one about four weeks ago.'

I took a quick look at my wristwatch to confirm the date. Four weeks ago would have been around the beginning of February.

‘So here's what I think, guys,' I said. ‘There is a third person living here, but it's not Stéphane.'

I looked from Charles to Charles. ‘Instead, Stéphane is your landlord, and he comes here at the beginning of every month to pick up his rent and his mail. Is that right?'

Both men remained silent.

I sighed, tearing off a piece of paper from my notebook.

‘If you don't want police showing up here every few days, I strongly suggest that you “remember” where Stéphane lives. He's not necessarily in that much trouble, but we
do
need to talk to him urgently. If you know anything, or if you run into him, please call us on this number,' I said, and wrote down ‘101' in comically large numbers on the pad. ‘Or ask
him
to come talk to us at any police station.'

‘And now,' Pete says. ‘I'm just going to have a quick look in that room where nobody lives, to make sure that nobody is living there at this very moment. Would that be okay?' He looked from Charles to Charles, daring each of them to protest. They didn't.

As we waited, I found myself wondering if Pete really had valid grounds for search. Obviously, we have the right to search for people when we're executing an arrest enquiry, but searching a room where there obviously is nobody home? I figured I'd keep my mouth shut. Still, if Pete felt he could write up an explanation for the search, then it was on him. In his defence, we did have to confirm whether or not our missing person actually lived in this flat, and it would be good for the report to be able to add that extra scrap of information.

Pete returned only a few minutes later and handed me a piece of paper; it was a letter from a mobile phone company.

‘Who is Boubacar?' I asked.

One of the Charleses mumbled something.

‘Excuse me?' I snapped. I'd lost my patience with these two by now.

We were two hours into a negative arrest enquiry, a process that normally only takes five minutes: you check the house – if the person you're looking for is there, you arrest them and take them to the station; if not, you leave. This was getting a little bit ridiculous.

‘It's my brother,' said the Charles who hadn't spoken any English at first.

‘Do you know his date of birth?' I asked.

He gave it to me, and I ran Boubacar's details through the computer as well. He came back as wanted in suspicion of several counts of fraud, all committed in Birmingham.