Gunrunner (2 page)

‘Trouble?’ asked George Sutton, once I’d terminated the call.

‘You could say that, George,’ I said. ‘I’ve just had a call-out to a murder at Heathrow.’ I sighed, stood up and made my way to the kitchen to break the news that I would be missing out on Christmas dinner.

‘I expect you can get a sandwich at the airport, darling,’ was Gail’s somewhat dry response. She had grown accustomed to my disappearing at the most inopportune moments.

‘This zone of the car park’s closed, sir.’ The speaker was a uniformed jobsworth who, all puffed up with piss and importance, was strutting back and forth across the entrance. There was a policeman standing nearby, but he didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular.

‘You may not have noticed,’ I said, waving my warrant card under his nose, ‘but this car has the word POLICE plastered all over it, and there are blue lights on its roof.’ By now I was in a thoroughly pissed-off mood, and this guy was doing nothing to alleviate it. Just to emphasize the point, my driver gave the attendant an ear-splitting blast on the siren.

‘Ah! Of course, sir. Very good, sir.’ The official crossed to the control box, managing to combine haste with obsequiousness, and raised the barrier. ‘Your chaps are already in there, sir,’ he added helpfully.

An unnecessarily large area of the car park had been cordoned off with the familiar blue and white tapes. I got out of the traffic car and walked towards my latest investigation.

I was intercepted by a uniformed inspector who carefully recorded my name on his clipboard.

‘Merry Christmas, guv,’ said Dave Poole, striding towards me with a huge grin on his face.

Detective Sergeant Poole is my right hand; what I don’t think of, he does. The grandson of a Bethnal Green doctor who arrived from the Caribbean in the nineteen-fifties, Dave graduated in English from London University, and it shows. When it suits him. Shunning the professional calling of his grandfather, and indeed of his chartered accountant father, Dave decided to join the Metropolitan Police. He often claimed, to the embarrassment of those who worry about diversity, that this made him the black sheep of the family.

‘What’s the SP, Dave?’ I asked, even though Don Keegan had given me the broad picture.

‘That guy over there, guv,’ said Dave, pointing to a white-faced individual, ‘is some sort of security dogsbody. At ten o’clock this morning, he was doing a routine patrol and came across the victim in a Jaguar XJ.’ He pointed to the canvas screens now surrounding the crime scene. ‘Doctor Mortlock’s in there somewhere, working his magic.’

I opened the flap and found Henry Mortlock in the act of packing his ghoulish instruments into a small black bag.

‘Merry Christmas, Henry,’ I said.

‘What’s bloody merry about it?’ muttered Mortlock. ‘And before you ask, as far as I can tell without carving her up, she was killed by a number of knife wounds to the chest and abdomen. Quite deep, I should think. I’ll be able to give you further and better particulars after the post-mortem.’

‘When are you proposing to do the PM, Henry?’

Mortlock gave me a sour look. ‘This afternoon, I suppose,’ he said grudgingly. ‘What a way to spend Christmas.’ And belying that pithy comment, he went on his way, humming an extract from Good King Wenceslas.

I cast a cursory glance over the car that still contained the body of our murder victim. The dead woman had been a good-looking blonde, probably in her early thirties, and the quality of her outfit implied wealth.

Linda Mitchell, who enjoyed the title of senior forensic practitioner, was already standing by. Beyond the tapes was a van emblazoned with the words EVIDENCE RECOVERY UNIT. This, presumably, was another snazzy slogan to emanate from the funny names and total confusion squad at Scotland Yard. This unit is staffed by boy superintendents whose aim in life is to reach the very top of the constabulary tree without actually doing any police duty. But they’re an absolute whizz at changing things that don’t need to be changed and offering advice to officers who have no need of it.

‘OK to make a start, Mr Brock?’ asked Linda.

‘Yes, carry on. Dr Mortlock’s finished in there.’

‘D’you want a word with Mr Shaw, guv?’ asked Dave, as Linda disappeared behind the screens.

‘Shaw?’ I was becoming confused already.

‘He’s the car park guy who found the body.’

‘Ah, right. Got it.’ I crossed to where the pale-faced one was perched on a steel barrier, constantly sipping water from a plastic bottle. He looked as though he was about to be sick.

‘I’m DCI Brock,’ I said. ‘And you’re Mr Shaw are you?’

‘That’s me, guv’nor, Peter Shaw.’

‘What time did you come on duty this morning?’

‘Seven o’clock.’

‘And at what time did you do your first patrol of this zone of the car park?’

Shaw looked decidedly shifty. ‘Well, it must’ve been about, um . . .’

‘Mr Shaw,’ I said, ‘I don’t give a toss when you were
supposed
to have started patrolling, and I don’t care what company regulations you might’ve broken by not being where you should’ve been
when
you should’ve been. I’m not going to run off and tell your boss, so just answer the question.’

‘A couple of minutes before ten, guv’nor. You see, the lads in the control room, being as how it’s Christmas, had put on a bit of—’

‘Enough,’ said Dave. ‘Just answer the chief inspector’s questions, otherwise he could get very nasty. And I should know,’ he added. He was lying, of course. I hoped.

‘Just before ten, sir,’ said Shaw again.

‘And tell me exactly what you found, Mr Shaw,’ I said.

‘I spotted this car, and saw that there was someone in it. That’s against the regulations, you see. People are not allowed to—’ Shaw noticed my frown, and returned to the facts. ‘I tapped on the window, but the passenger didn’t move. So, I opened the door and this woman fell out, all covered in blood. It gave me a nasty turn, guv’nor, I can tell you.’

‘Must’ve been very upsetting for you,’ murmured Dave.

‘What did you do then?’ I asked.

‘I got in touch with the control room, and they sent for the police.’

‘Are you able to tell me when this car came into this section of the car park?’ I asked.

‘Already done, guv,’ said Dave. ‘The car entered at exactly three minutes to seven yesterday evening.’

‘That means that the body had probably been here since then,’ I said.

‘Looks like it, guv.’

‘But surely there must’ve been other patrols through the night.’ I found it difficult to believe that the body had lain undiscovered for that long.

‘It was Christmas Eve, guv,’ said Dave, assuming that to be a sufficient explanation for neglect of duty on the part of the car park authority. ‘But Miss Ebdon is checking that now. She went straight to their office; she’ll be up shortly.’

Kate Ebdon is one of my detective inspectors. A flame-haired Australian, she came to us on promotion from the Flying Squad where, it is rumoured, she gave pleasure to a number of its officers. Male ones, of course. She usually dresses in tight-fitting jeans and a man’s white shirt, something that upsets our beloved commander. When Kate first arrived in HSCC, he suggested that I speak to her about her mode of dress, not wishing to do so himself. I pointed out that such an approach might be interpreted as sexism or even racism, Kate being Australian. As the commander is keen on diversity, that was the last I heard about it.

One of Kate’s great assets is that she is a tenacious interrogator. I was already beginning to feel sorry for those officials who had failed to notice, until this morning, the presence of a dead body in an expensive car that, ostensibly, was under their protection.

‘Do we know the identity of the dead woman, Dave?’ I asked.

‘Yes, guv. She had credit cards, a driver’s licence and a passport on her. She’s Kerry Hammond and according to her driver’s licence she lives at Elite Drive, Barnes. The next of kin is shown in her passport as Nicholas Hammond, same address, presumably her husband. Oh, and she had a mobile phone with her.’

‘Any cash?

‘Yeah, about two hundred pounds sterling and five hundred US dollars.’

‘It doesn’t look as though robbery was the motive, then,’ I said, stating the obvious. ‘Does the car belong to her?’

‘Possibly,’ said Dave. ‘It’s registered to a company called Kerry Trucking Limited with offices at Scarman Street, Chiswick.’

‘I wonder if that’s a coincidence, it being Kerry Trucking and that the victim’s first name is Kerry.’

‘No doubt we shall find out in due course, sir.’ From Dave’s tone, I gathered that he didn’t think it mattered; he always called me ‘sir’ when he thought I’d made a fatuous remark. And he always called me ‘sir’ in the presence of members of the public.

‘Better put a stop on this Nicholas Hammond with the Border Agency, Dave, in case he’s abroad and returns in the next day or two.’

‘Already done, guv,’ said Dave. ‘Although there’s nothing to suggest that he’s gone anywhere.’

‘I’ve checked the deceased’s fingerprints, Mr Brock,’ said Linda, emerging from the tent. ‘No record.’

‘That was quick,’ I said.

‘One of the miracles of modern science, Mr Brock.’ Linda held up a small machine that looked to me like a mobile phone. ‘But it’ll take longer to examine the vehicle to see if anyone else has left their dabs.’ And with that, she disappeared behind the screens once more.

Dave and I turned as Kate Ebdon approached the tapes, but the uniformed inspector with the clipboard stopped her.

‘This zone’s closed, miss,’ said the inspector. ‘Do you have a car here?’

‘Yes,’ said Kate, ‘that one.’ She pointed to the traffic car that was still parked outside the tapes. ‘DI Ebdon, HSCC.’

‘Oh, sorry, love,’ said the inspector, not realizing that he was making a grievous mistake.

‘I’m not accustomed to being called “love” by some uniformed idiot who’s just standing around making a bloody nuisance of himself,
mate
,’ she snapped back, and ducked under the tape.
Aussies one – Brits nil.

‘Good afternoon, Kate,’ I said.

‘Merry Christmas, guv.’ Kate flicked open her pocketbook. ‘They’re a load of bloody drongos down in that control room,’ she said.

‘Go on.’ By now I was beginning to get the hang of the Australian language, and gathered that the members of staff to whom she referred were idiots.

‘The short answer is that no one did a patrol after about three o’clock yesterday afternoon. They were doubtless getting a few tinnies under their belts on account of it being Christmas. I told them I’d be taking it up with higher authority, just for the hell of it. That should’ve poured cold water on their festivities. I left Sheila Armitage to take statements, for what use they’ll be.’

‘Thanks, Kate, and perhaps you’d get someone to take a statement from Shaw over there, he of the pasty countenance.’

‘Incidentally, guv, there’s a bloke from our Press Bureau just turned up. He’s in a lather about how much to release to the press.’

This was always a problem. I didn’t want anything going out until we’d at least made some preliminary enquiries. We frequently needed the help of the media, but it had to be carefully controlled to avoid telling the murderer something that might help him to evade capture.

‘Tell him I don’t want anything released at this stage, Kate. And while you’re about it, have a word with the car park staff and emphasize that they’re to say nothing to the press.’

‘Don’t worry, guv, I’ll persuade them that it wouldn’t be in their best interest to speak to anyone.’

Once again, I felt a certain sympathy for the occupants of the control room; Kate in a persuasive mood can be terrifyingly intimidating.

‘We’ve completed our preliminary search of the car, Mr Brock,’ said Linda Mitchell, as she emerged once again from the tent. ‘I’ve arranged for a low-loader to take it to Lambeth, and then we can start on a scientific examination, including any stray fingerprints and anything else we can find.’

‘What about the contents of the vehicle, Linda?’ I asked.

‘There was a handbag, a cabin carry-on bag, a faux fur coat, matching hat, and a pair of gloves. And a suitcase in the boot. She was wearing an expensive necklace, earrings, and wedding and engagement rings. I’ve bagged those. In the glove box I found a packet of sweets and an unpaid parking ticket.’

‘All right to move the body, guv?’ asked Detective Sergeant ‘Shiner’ Wright. Wright was the laboratory liaison officer whose task was to accompany the body in order to preserve continuity of evidence.

‘Yes, go ahead, Shiner.’ I looked around for a spare officer. ‘John,’ I said, setting eyes on DC Appleby, ‘go with Linda to the lab, and list everything she unpacks.’ I spotted a number of closed-circuit television cameras around the parking area. ‘Seize the tapes from those, Dave, and then we can get back to Curtis Green, via Henry Mortlock’s carvery, of course.’

Curtis Green is where we have our offices. Once a part of New Scotland Yard, it’s in a turning off Whitehall, and very few people – including the police – know where it is. Right now, I was wishing I’d never set eyes on the place. All I could think of was Gail and her parents tucking into a sumptuous Christmas dinner.

TWO

W
e went straight from the airport to Horseferry Road, only to find that Henry Mortlock had already completed his post-mortem examination of Kerry Hammond.

‘Nothing much to add to what I told you at the scene, Harry,’ said Mortlock, as he peeled off his latex gloves and tossed them into the medical waste bin. ‘Death resulted from five stab wounds, one of which penetrated the heart. The entry wounds were made by a broad-bladed weapon, at least four centimetres in width, I should think, and she’d been dead for between ten and sixteen hours. Best I can do.’

‘Thanks, Henry. Enjoy the rest of your Christmas.’

‘Fat chance of that,’ muttered Mortlock. ‘The damned house is overflowing with relatives.’

It was almost seven o’clock by the time we arrived at Curtis Green. The only redeeming feature of being there on Christmas Day was that there was no chance of our beloved commander showing up and faffing about with bits of paper. The commander loves paper. But today, I tried to visualize him wearing a paper hat and enjoying Christmas dinner with his harridan of a wife, a photograph of whom adorns his desk. Presumably it’s been placed there as an awful warning to anyone contemplating matrimony.