Gunrunner (20 page)

‘A discreet word,’ said Kate. ‘Is your husband there?’

‘Yes, he is. He’s watching the football on television, but what has that to do with you?’

‘Well, let’s say that it would be better if he wasn’t privy to our conversation, if you get my meaning.’

‘Oh God!’ exclaimed the woman, suddenly realizing why Kate was being so circumspect. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Costas coffee bar, just round the corner. Can you meet me there?’

There was a pause. ‘But what’ll I tell my husband?’

‘You’ll think of something,’ said Kate.

The woman who entered the crowded coffee bar five minutes later was about thirty, and nervous. She was attired in jeans tucked into knee-high boots, a faux fur jacket and a yellow pashmina wound around her neck. She took a few minutes buying herself a coffee and, after a quick glance round, walked across to where Kate, the only woman alone, was sitting.

‘I’m Patricia Knight.’

‘DI Ebdon, Mrs Knight.’

‘What’s this all about?’ asked the woman, as she sat down opposite Kate.

‘I won’t beat about the bush, Mrs Knight,’ said Kate, ‘but are you having an affair with Michael Roberts?’

Patricia Knight looked mildly affronted. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone called Michael Roberts, and I resent the implication that—’

‘Perhaps you know him better as Miguel Rodriguez, Mrs Knight, and he runs the Spanish Fly nightclub in Mayfair, or did.’

Patricia stared at Kate. ‘D’you mean he’s not really Spanish?’

‘No, he’s not. And right now, he’s in custody charged with serious offences. There’s also a possibility that he’ll be charged with murder.’

Patricia leaned back, her face white, and for a moment Kate thought she might faint. But then she recovered.

‘What has any of this to do with me, Inspector?’

‘When he was interviewed with regard to the murder of a woman – about your age, as a matter of fact – he claimed to have spent the evening of Christmas Eve with you in a bedroom at his club. Is that correct?’

There was a long pause before Patricia Knight replied. ‘Yes, that’s right, I did. Oh God, what’ll happen if my husband finds out?’

‘Roberts seemed to think your husband might murder you.’ Kate smiled; but she had little time for adulterous wives.

Patricia Knight obviously didn’t take the threat seriously. ‘Will I have to go to court or anything like that?’ she asked. ‘I mean, will it get into the papers?’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Kate, ‘but we might need a statement from you.’ She handed the woman a card. ‘Ring me on that number in a couple of days’ time, and I’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you,’ said Patricia, ‘for being so discreet.’

‘Incidentally, how did you manage to meet Roberts on Christmas Eve? What did you tell your husband?’

‘He wasn’t at home. He’s an airline pilot, long haul, and he didn’t get home until the afternoon of Christmas Day.’ Patricia paused. ‘You’re Australian, aren’t you?’

‘Got it in one, mate,’ said Kate.

DI Driscoll and DS Dave Poole had just parked their unmarked police car in Stevenage Road, home of Fulham Football Club, when they were approached by a policeman.

‘You can’t park here, mate,’ said the PC, glaring at the car’s driver.

‘As a matter of fact,
Constable
, I’ve got this special parking permit,’ said Dave Poole, and thrust his warrant card under the PC’s nose.

‘Oh, sorry, Skip,’ said the policeman, and wandered away to badger some unfortunate who thought he could park his car right outside the main entrance to the ground.

It was just past five o’clock before the first of the home-going crowd began to emerge from the stadium.

‘There he is, guv, that’s Sharpe.’ Dave pointed to a man who was in earnest conversation with another fan as the pair left one of the exits. They stopped outside the football club’s shop and continued talking. Five minutes later, they split up, making their way along Stevenage Road in opposite directions.

Dave waited until Sharpe had turned into Harbord Street before starting the engine and slowly following him. When their quarry was almost at Fulham Palace Road, Dave accelerated and stopped alongside him.

‘Billy Sharpe,’ said Driscoll, as he leaped out of the car, ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of trafficking in illegal firearms.’

‘Do what?’ Sharpe was clearly stunned by the arrival of the police and the swiftness of his arrest, and looked around as though seeking assistance from other fans.

Driscoll opened the rear door of the car and bundled Sharpe into it before taking the seat next to him. ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence . . .’ he began, and quickly reeled off the rest of the caution.

‘I dunno what you’re on about,’ protested Sharpe as Driscoll handcuffed him. It was a lame and predictable response.

‘You’ll soon find out,’ said Dave, as he drove off. ‘Who won?’

‘Spurs,’ said Sharpe miserably.

‘Not your day, is it,’ said Dave, and glanced at Driscoll through the driving mirror. ‘Charing Cross nick, guv?’ he asked.

‘That’ll do nicely,’ said Driscoll, and phoned Curtis Green to tell Wilberforce that Sharpe was on his way to the police station in Agar Street off the Strand.

I didn’t have a lot to say to Sharpe; we had much of the evidence we needed to convict him, or so I hoped. He had lied about his stops on his drive up from Dover and that, to my mind, was good enough to confirm that he knew all about the gunrunning.

‘What’s this all about?’ demanded Sharpe truculently.

‘Yesterday, traffic officers inspected your tachograph when you returned to the yard at Kerry Trucking,’ I began.

‘So?’

‘You stated that you had delivered tyres somewhere in Folkestone, but—’

‘I did,’ said Sharpe.

‘Just listen,’ I said. ‘We know that you didn’t go into Folkestone, and we know that you weren’t carrying tyres. Furthermore, you claimed to have stopped at a quarter past ten in Borough High Street for breakfast, and at eleven fifteen on Victoria Embankment for a pee.’

‘Yeah, well, I did.’ Sharpe’s response was unconvincing and he now appeared a little more apprehensive than when I’d started. It was slowly dawning on him that we knew he was lying, but he wasn’t bright enough to work out how we knew.

‘In fact your ten fifteen stop was in Cantard Street, Walworth,’ I continued, ‘and your eleven fifteen stop was at Broders Road, Kennington.’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘I know all this, Billy, because you were followed right across France, and from Dover all the way to Chiswick,’ I said, ignoring his pathetic attempt to distance himself from any involvement. ‘We know exactly where you stopped, and we now know why. This morning we raided the premises at Cantard Street where we found a quantity of illegally imported firearms. During the course of that search, we arrested Michael Roberts, also known as Miguel Rodriguez, and we nicked Patrick Hogan as well. But, like you, they seem to be go-betweens.’

Sharpe had paled significantly, and was now sweating almost feverishly. But he remained silent, probably anticipating the clang of a prison cell door.

‘I realize that you’re just a pawn in all this, Billy,’ I said, ‘but unless we lay hands on the principals, you, Roberts and Hogan are likely to go down for the full whack.’ That wasn’t strictly true; they’d probably get a substantial sentence anyway, including Sharpe, particularly if the Crown Prosecution Service decided to deploy one of several anti-terrorism statutes available to it.

‘But I was only driving the rig,’ protested Sharpe. He had rapidly grasped the significance of the predicament in which he now found himself.

‘I was only obeying orders,’ muttered Dave, half to himself. ‘That’s the oldest excuse in the book, Billy. It’s called the Nuremberg defence. So, who’s the Mr Big?’ he asked. ‘Who’s the guy at the top of the heap?’

‘I don’t know,’ protested Sharpe. ‘But if what you’re saying about guns is true, it’s heavy business, innit? They’re the sort of people who’d bloody kill anyone they thought had grassed,’ he complained. ‘But I don’t know nothing, so I can’t tell you what I don’t know.’

‘I don’t think you’re being straight with us, Billy, keeping shtum,’ said Dave, ‘but you’ll probably have twenty years to think about whether you’ve made the right decision,’ he added casually, grossly exaggerating the length of gaol time to which Sharpe might be sentenced. ‘Matter for you really.’

Sharpe spent some time pondering the prospect of emerging from prison just in time to draw his state pension. ‘It’s some geezer called Charlie Pollard, but I never met him,’ he said eventually.

‘And where does this Pollard live?’ I asked. Patrick Hogan had already given us the name, and had told us that he thought Pollard lived in the Bethnal Green area. But no one seemed to have met this shadowy figure.

‘Bethnal Green,’ said Sharpe, somewhat reluctantly.

‘It’s a big place,’ said Dave, who had been born there and knew the area thoroughly. ‘Whereabouts?’

‘I think it’s in Argus Road.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I heard Bligh let it slip one day. I was just outside the office and he was on the blower to someone.’

That was indeed a revelation. As I’d mentioned earlier, I’d harboured suspicions about Bernard Bligh from the outset and now Billy Sharpe had more or less confirmed them.

‘You took over from a guy called Dixon, Gary Dixon, when he got the sack about three months ago,’ said Dave.

‘Did I? Never heard of him,’ said Sharpe.

‘Who gave you the job?’

‘Mrs Hammond.’

‘And did Mrs Hammond tell you about her little gunrunning operation?’

‘No, I never knew nothing about guns. She said it was to do a special run from time to time to pick up wine.’

That might just be the truth. Sharpe had said that Marcel Lebrun’s people had told him to go for a meal while they loaded the vehicle, and it was conceivable that they’d secreted the firearms behind the false panel during Sharpe’s absence.

‘Were you present when your vehicle was unloaded at Cantard Street, Billy?’ asked Dave.

‘No, they told me to push off and get some breakfast while they took care of it.’

That had been confirmed by the surveillance team that had followed Sharpe from Dover.

‘If it was all legit, then, why did you lie about where you’d stopped?’

‘Mrs Hammond told me I always had to do that because she didn’t want Bligh knowing, seeing as how he wasn’t in on the wine business.’

‘But Mrs Hammond’s dead,’ said Dave. ‘So who took over running the wine business after she was murdered?’

This time, Sharpe didn’t hesitate. ‘That bloke called Roberts you mentioned just now,’ he said.

‘So, now we come to the big question, Billy,’ I said. ‘Who murdered Mrs Hammond?’

‘Well, you needn’t look at me,’ said Sharpe, combining relief with triumph in his voice. ‘It weren’t nothing to do with me.’

‘Just for the record, Billy, where were you on Christmas Eve?’ asked Dave.

Sharpe grinned. ‘Having it off with a German bird I met in a nightclub during a stopover in Berlin. And if you want her name, it was Mia Steinbrück, and she was a bit of all right.’

‘Address?’ demanded Dave.

‘She had a flat over some sort of Asian market shop in Dircksenstrasse,’ said Sharpe triumphantly. ‘I remember that because Mia went downstairs and bought the makings of a curry supper. Nothing like a bit of curry for getting a bird hotted up,’ he added.

If Sharpe was telling the truth, I’d be able to check it with a
hauptkommissar
I knew in the Berlin police, but I was fairly certain that Sharpe would not have been so specific if he had been lying.

I’d told Sharpe that he was a pawn in Kerry Hammond’s operation, and it was beginning to look that way. He certainly appeared not to know anything about the illegal importation of firearms, and that we knew that he’d been sidelined during the loading and unloading tended to confirm it. On the basis of our conversation I got the impression that he was too thick to be trusted with details of the operation, and Kerry had probably come to the same conclusion. After all, the fewer people who knew what was going on, the less the chance that the operation would be compromised.

It was now half past seven and we needed to effect the arrests of the mysterious Charlie Pollard, and of Bernard Bligh who clearly knew more than he’d been telling.

Once more, I assembled a team.

I decided that Kate Ebdon, Dave Poole and I would go to Argus Road, Bethnal Green. We didn’t know which house was occupied by Charlie Pollard, but a few resourceful local enquiries would likely give us the information we required. The only possible hitch, given that it was Saturday evening, was that Pollard might be out, but it was a chance we’d have to take. On the other hand it was on the cards that Pollard had already heard of the arrests of Roberts, Hogan and Sharpe, and had done a runner. The intelligence grapevine of the underworld is extremely efficient when liberty is at stake.

In the meantime, I assigned DI Driscoll to pick up Bernard Bligh who, by now, was probably at home in Carmen Avenue, Hatton.

‘If this guy Pollard is a villains’ armourer, guv,’ said Dave, ‘shouldn’t we have some armed support?’

‘Not this time, Dave. We’ll get tooled up ourselves.’

‘But we need authority for that, and I somehow doubt that the commander—’

‘I’ve thought of that, Dave,’ I said, ‘but I’ve had an idea.’

‘Good luck, sir!’ said Dave.

I went into my office and telephoned the DAC at home.

‘I’ve tried to get hold of the commander, sir,’ I lied, ‘but I think he must be out.’

‘That’s all right, Harry,’ said the DAC. ‘What’s the problem?’

I explained, as briefly as possible, what we were about to do and why.

There was no hesitation. ‘Go ahead, Harry, but keep your heads down and try not to shoot any innocent bystanders.’

‘Not much chance of finding any innocents in Bethnal Green, guv’nor,’ I said.

‘I’ll sign the authorization on Monday, Harry,’ said the DAC, ‘And I’ll send it over to your office first thing.’

That satisfied me. I knew that the DAC wouldn’t renege on his undertaking if it all went pear shaped, unlike some senior officers I’d known.