London Large: Blood on the Streets (13 page)

H prayed silently that one
day he’d meet and get the chance to deal one-on-one with this little wanker;
but, nonetheless, he was finding him impossible to ignore, like a bad groin
rash he just had to scratch. He picked up the remote and hit the ON button.

‘What on earth has happened
in this world when ignorant, two-bob ponces like Jupiter can air their fucking
propaganda on TV?’

Amisha said, ‘He’s a social
media superstar who now has over a million followers on twitter. We can’t
ignore him.’

As the TV flickered into life
H saw that Jupiter was already waxing lyrical.

‘So what should be done?’
asked the chirpy, dolled-up presenter with a tone of reverence and admiration for
the ‘superstar’ who sat before her, wrongly assuming that this epitome of
social media emptiness possessed a detailed knowledge of gangland London and
the policing methods needed to combat it.

‘Well, it’s very clear that
The Met have lost control of London’s streets and that their methods and
tactics are outdated. We need to…’

H hit the OFF button, looking
about as happy as a small dog revolving in a microwave.

‘Ames, you said you had some
good news.’

‘Yes guv, I’ll get you up to
speed en route. We have to be at the Yard for a full debrief after lunch, but
we have a little detour first.’

H kissed Olivia on the cheek,
finished up his coffee and looked forward to the ‘good news’.

H jumped in and banged
the car door shut.

‘So, what have you been up to
Ames. Where we off to?’

‘Head for Camberwell Green,
I’ve followed up on some tip-offs from some pals of Confident John. I’ve got a
warrant to search some premises there.’ She flashed him the address. The
lockups behind the back of Camberwell New Road. He knew them well. Lot of
history there. H lit up the car and put his foot down.

‘So fill me in Ames.’

Amisha had been busy. Very
busy. During H’s bender she had made a few trips to Bermondsey, getting to know
some of the other colourful characters Confident John hung out with, getting
close to him, seeing what she could see. This was one of H’s maxims.

Have a little mooch about.
See what you can see.

Eventually she had been put
in touch with Pete ‘Pitbull’ Patterson. She’d met him in a pub in the Walworth
Road. She recounted to H how she was filled with trepidation as she entered it.
The sunlight barely pierced the grimy windows. A heavy, old-school fug hung
over the place. It seemed that the smoking ban hadn’t reached this part of
town. The few customers the pub still managed to pull in sat in isolated
pockets in its murky corners. It felt like the waiting room at the end of the
world.

Pitbull sat in the far corner
downing a pint of lager. Three little monsters sat obediently at his feet.
Confident John’s friends were right; it would be obvious to her who Pitbull was
when she entered the pub. Apart from the dogs his thickset neck, busted nose
and sunken eyes told the story of an old-school street fighter who had been
bashed up one time too many.

She sauntered over, doing her
best to look like she belonged in the place but in reality as out of place as
the Dalai Lama in a Texan whorehouse. John had not warned her to dress down; in
these parts, the only smart people were plainclothes coppers.

‘Pitbull?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m Ames. Confident John
said I’d find ya in ‘ere.’ She was dropping her T’s and H’s faster than a
privately educated, champagne socialist politician visiting a cement factory on
the run up to an election.

‘Can I get you a beer?’ She
knew social obligations had to come before the verbal. She bought Pitbull a
pint and got herself a glass of disgusting and undrinkable white wine.
Fortunately she never intended to drink it, but thought it was the standard for
a young lady in this part of town.

‘Alright fella, Confident
John informs me you might have some info I’d be interested in?’ She winced with
regret when she used the word ‘informs’; she knew it was a mistake but she
thought she’d got away with it.

‘Yeah, he called me. Listen,
I ain’t no grass. I don’t want any comeback. This conversation never fucking
happened. Got it?’

‘Yeah, got it.’

‘Well, the night of the Soho
Massacre, I saw them.’

‘Saw what?’

‘The vans. They came down
here, along Walworth Rd. On their way to the West End.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Well, it was two in the
morning. I don’t sleep well so I was out walking the boys.’ He patted each of
the three dogs in turn.

‘Two transit vans were coming
down from Camberwell. They were the only traffic on the street so I clocked
’em. They were the ones in the papers, no doubt about it.’

‘Why didn’t you come...’

‘Listen love. No comebacks.
You understand. If you hadn’t found me I wouldn’t have come forward. John asked
me to talk to you so I’m here. Get this sorted. It’s gone too far.’

‘One more question,’ said Amisha.
‘Have you ever seen this man?’ She passed a picture of Dragusha across the
shattered oak table.

Pitbull held his best poker
stare and considered the implications of his next move. No doubt this was the
man in the lead vehicle. He’d made eye contact. It was the kind of face you
don’t forget in a hurry. Still, he was already in deep so he played his hand.

‘Don’t ever come back to me.
I’ll deny ever having met you, but yeah, he was in the passenger seat of the
leading van. Those eyes, that face, no fucking doubt about it sweetheart.’

As she recounted the story H
started to view Amisha in a new light. A 28 year old Cambridge educated Indian
girl in and out of the boozers of Bermondsey and Walworth, working his patch
while he’d been out on the razzle. He’d always known she was clever and she’d
been very useful translating the mysteries of the world of social media. But
now she was revealing a whole new side of herself, stepping up to the plate
while her partner was out of the game.

Good girl. She’s worth ten
of that prick Miller-Marchant.

‘Fucking hell Ames, you’re
starting to have the makings of a half decent copper.’

She smiled, and continued her
story.

‘That was yesterday. I pulled
every CCTV camera from Walworth and Camberwell and traced the vans back to
their starting point. The search warrant came through but we decided to monitor
the premises through the night. Nobody has come or gone. Right here and then
second left’, she said.

H pulled up outside the
garage. A posse of Police Constables and officers from the armed response unit
were already in attendance.

‘Do we know anything about
the owners Ames?’

‘That’s the thing guv, they
boarded up and left over a year ago. Emigrated to Australia. As far as the
records show the place has been left empty since then.’

Police Constable Frank
Jones had heard H was on the way so came prepared, handing him a decent cup of
builder’s tea from the local greasy spoon on arrival: strong, two sugars.

‘Thanks Frank.’

H sipped gratefully as
another PC, a young and eager new recruit by the name of Duwain McGregor, took
out the bolt cutters and cut through the padlock that secured the garage door.
H sipped on his tea and released a sigh of pleasure. Old brains do love a
cuppa.

H bent down, lifted the
aluminium rollover garage door and stood at the entrance to the lockup. His
breathing was relaxed and gently rhythmic as he felt inside, flicked on the
light and surveyed the scene.

The place smelled musty and
stale. Mouldy sandwiches turned blue with fungus were left on a table in one
corner. Two rats loitered in the shadows, unperturbed by the new arrivals as
they munched away on crumbs from the feast. In the other corner some wooden
crates were stacked in a pile.

But smack bang in the middle
of the garage was the
piece de resistance
. The main prize. The two
transit vans had made their way back to their starting point, the false number
plates matching those of the two vans witnessed at the massacre in Soho. What
secrets would they reveal wondered H, as he downed his tea and flicked on a
pair of gloves.

Forensics were on the way and
H wanted them all over the place, like flies around a turd on a hot summer’s
day. But he wanted to check everything himself first.

He made his way over to the
sandwiches. They were wrapped in some old newspapers. He carefully started to
peel away the sandwich wrapping. He’d expected the paper to be a tabloid, maybe
The Sun or The Daily Mirror, but the font size and sheet size showed it to be a
broadsheet.

‘Ames, looks like one of our
murderers is a Times reader, that’s a turn-up for the books.’

Amisha looked on and noticed
H go wobbly as he held up the page to the light and surveyed its contents.

‘What is it guv?’

‘Fucking hell, it’s Tara’s
obituary’, he said as he handed the paper to her, ‘what the fuck are stale
sandwiches in a lock up in Camberwell frequented by a band of murderous thugs
doing wrapped up in a copy of Tara’s obituary?’

‘Don’t read too much into it
guv. News of Tara’s murder has been in every paper for the last ten days.’

But H didn’t believe in
coincidences. The picture of Tara had shocked him but he was holding it
together. Amisha noticed that rather than rendering him helpless, as the sight
of Tara’s body had done in St James’ Park, it was actually livening him up,
spurring him on.

In unison the detectives
moved over to the crates.

Used to transport the arsenal
of weaponry these bastards took to the party in Soho, H surmised correctly as
he lifted the lid on the boxes. Useful as evidence when they nicked the
bastards but probably not much would be revealed to forensics.

Now for the vans. H tried the
back lock of the first of them and found it to be open. He looked inside. The
van had been cleaned recently, that much was clear. He stepped back and made
his way to the driver’s seat at the front. He was about to try the lock when he
noticed a piece of paper from the corner of his eye, protruding from the front
wheel. He bent down to pick it up. It was a cut-out from another newspaper. He
wasn’t sure which one; it didn’t really matter.

‘Fucking hell this just
doesn’t make sense. No fucking sense at all. A lockup in Camberwell used to
plan the biggest criminal assault between two feuding gangs in the history of
London, sandwiches wrapped up in a copy of Tara’s obituary from The Times and a
cut out of a picture of Tara and Jemima laying stuck to a wheel.’

He passed the picture to
Amisha.

‘Oh my God guv, do you think
Dragusha and his firm targeted them? Why? It doesn’t make sense. There’s no
connection, no motive.’

‘Not at the moment Ames, no’,
H said thoughtfully, ‘not at the moment.’

H and Amisha pulled up
outside Scotland Yard. H braked the car to an abrupt halt and leapt out. He was
agitated and itching to get up to speed on the Tara case, and to speak to
Hilary about the discoveries in Camberwell. The queue at the lift irritated him
further. H barged past the crowd, made his way to the stairwell and started the
climb to the seventh floor. He was knackered by the time they got to the third,
but his agitation drove him on. Amisha's smooth and regular breathing, as she
bounded up behind, stood in stark contrast to H's heavy panting.

H reached the seventh.
Ignoring the faces surprised to see him turning up at work, he steered a path
through the open plan office and burst his way into the incident room, where an
update on the Tara case was in progress.

‘Inspector Hawkins, how nice
of you to drop in,’ said Hilary. ‘This is not your case - please leave
immediately and make your way to my office. When I’m finished here you can
update me on your case and explain where the hell you have been these last few
days.’

H believed in the chain of
command when he felt it was necessary. At this moment he didn’t. He stared hard
at the officer in charge of the Tara case and went straight to the crux of the
matter.

‘Marchant, you got anything
yet?’

Miller-Marchant remained
silent. H knew what that meant.

Hilary said, ‘Inspector, I
just gave you an order. In case you hadn’t noticed, orders are still followed
in this Police Service. You have a full debrief on what your team have on the
Soho Massacre in thirty minutes. I suggest you go and prepare for that.’

His dislike of
Miller-Marchant allowed his pride to get the better of him, and he exaggerated
the progress made on the massacre.

‘We have a highly reliable
eye witness who can pinpoint the gang member who led the raid on the Russians
and, oh yeah, I have evidence that links the two cases.’

H had gained their full
attention. He was in control of the room. The massed ranks of detectives looked
on, eager and impatient for more information.

‘I’ll see you in your office
guv, when you’re ready,’ he said, and exited the incident room.

The outburst had had the
desired effect and a few minutes later Hilary and Miller-Marchant entered
Hilary’s office.

‘Now Inspector, where the
hell have you been while your team has been working hard on this? The media
have been all over us and upstairs are a hair’s breadth away from hanging you
out to dry. I’ve had to put some effort on keeping you on the case. H, the
truth, please.’

H considered his response. He
could say he had been underground working the case and he knew Amisha would
back him up. But it wasn’t part of his makeup to steal someone else’s thunder,
and he wanted the bosses to start realising just how good she was getting at
the job. He went for the truth.

‘Well Hilary, after the Tara
murder I was in bits. I was having a drink with Ronnie when all the shooting
started… The truth is the whole last few days have really got to me. I needed
to let off steam. I met a few mates for a drink.’