Mercy Killing (34 page)

He cast an eye over the remaining few. Less a sea of faces, more of a pond. And every one of them seemed fed up and tired. That included Gabrielle, who should have gone on another enquiry for
her own sanity if nothing else, but the staff shortage forced Harry to say nothing and let her carry on.

‘I know it’s been a long week and whilst we’ve taken four people into custody and not charged any of them – well not for this murder anyway – we have at least
helped to find the killer from a murder case twenty years ago through Jonathan Tey being uploaded to the DNA database.’

He paused to smile and focus on everyone in the room individually. It didn’t take long, but he knew it was important for the team not to lose momentum.

‘I’d like to thank you for your brilliant work so far, and stress that I know it’s only a matter of time before we uncover the identities of whoever murdered our victim.

‘It’s been a week, and I know it’s a Friday and most of you have this weekend off, but do I have any volunteers to stay on after their eight-hour shift and work until about
midnight?’

Harry looked at Sophia who looked down. He glanced at Tom who made an unconvincing job of appearing to work out if he was available. He then turned his attention to Gabrielle who said, ‘I
can do it.’

‘Me too,’ said Pierre.

Hazel waved a hand at him, in more of an ‘I don’t want to, but I’m new so should show willing’ way.

‘You lot are what makes the incident room tick,’ he said. He meant it, he really meant it, but he had that sinking feeling that told him that another busy weekend was about to start.
The chance of there not being a sexual assault, a suspicious death or any manner of hideous crime was very unlikely. That meant his department losing staff.

Once they scattered to the four corners, they probably wouldn’t all come back. He knew that some of them would become embroiled in other investigations and, like him, the senior
investigating officer wouldn’t want to let them go. Everyone’s murder investigation was more important to them than anyone else’s.

The briefing continued, each making their own contribution. Harry sat and listened, took notes when he needed to, offered advice, and buoyed them up as best he could as he ended their
get-together with a heavy heart.

The most he could hope for was that come seven o’clock that evening, someone’s memory might be jogged, and for new information to come to light.

Early hours of Wednesday 24 November

Two weeks and five days after Albert

Woodville’s murder

It wasn’t so much that PC Karl Roundtree was bored at 4 a.m. in the morning, it wasn’t that he had any particular reason for his eye being drawn to the silver
Renault Clio, he just had a feeling about it. Then he remembered a briefing slide which drew all officers’ attention to a silver Clio. There had been a partial registration number too. If he
had to put money on it, Karl would have said that it was a 52 plate.

As he sat in his marked car, partially obscured from the road by the evergreen kerbside shrubs, but with a clear view of anything coming up the street, Karl watched the small car make its way
towards him. It held the road well, it didn’t make any dubious manoeuvres, the driver didn’t even glance towards him as he approached the junction where the officer had chosen to
park.

With no other calls to attend, Karl thought he would drive along behind it for a while, carrying out the necessary checks as he drove, waiting to see what the driver would do.

The Clio stuck to the speed limit. The driver would have been a fool not to, although Karl had watched drivers go straight through red lights, scatter pedestrians out of the way on a pelican
crossing, pull out at roundabouts, and all with him behind them in a marked car. A car marked with the purpose of making it easy to see. It amused and amazed him.

He drove at a speed to keep up, although he kept his distance. Twice he saw the driver in front look in his rearview mirror. Karl could only see a face glance back at him, white and male. That
much he could be certain of in the gloom of the car’s interior and the darkness outside.

He would never be able to say what it was that initially drew his attention to the Clio; possibly it was enough that it was driving around at four o’clock in the morning and wasn’t a
milk float. Whatever it was, he felt his heart beat a little faster and the beginning of what he sensed was going to be a very good stop-check.

Karl waited for the result of the checks via the control room, all the while following the car, its driver now repeatedly turning his head up towards the rearview mirror.

A lack of other early-morning checks going on meant that it wasn’t long at all before Karl had the information he needed to speak to the driver.

Being single-crewed was not something that ever concerned Karl. He had been a uniform officer for eight years and had always got the measure of people in any situation. He was a Taser-trained
officer but had only had cause to use it occasionally. Not something he had ever carried out lightly and not something he would choose to do again unless his or another’s life was at risk. In
some situations he wouldn’t have time to draw his weapon, in which case it was better to prevent any trouble than try to solve it with violence.

He knew that. The person he stopped might not.

With his lights throwing patches of blue across the town’s ring road, Karl got out of his car and walked up to the driver’s side of the Clio. He did so with one eye on the occupant
and the other watching for movement from any other quarter. It might have seemed as if the car was only one up; it didn’t mean that it was.

‘Turn the engine off and step out of the car,’ said Karl. From where he was standing, all the officer could see inside the vehicle was the driver and a black bag on the front
seat.

The door opened suddenly in one swift movement, causing Karl to step back, mindful that he was in the road. He directed the driver, a man he estimated to be about twenty-five years old, skinny
build, messy short black hair, dressed in a pair of navy jogging bottoms and a black zip-up hoodie, over to the pavement.

Karl heard the unmistakable sound of a diesel police car as it came round the ring road to join him. Despite the seriousness of this stop-check, any stop-check, he found that he was smiling at
his colleagues’ inability to keep away and stop themselves muscling in on what might be an interesting arrest. Although performance indicators officially no longer existed, the rest of his
team were well aware that he made the most arrests in any given week. He had a reputation for finding those who were up to no good, especially in the small hours.

He watched the driver as he stood on the pavement. There was no doubt about it, there was definitely something on his mind – it was in the nervous jerk of his head, the unsteady placing of
his feet, the shaking of his weedy legs inside their jogging bottoms.

Despite his size, Karl knew that a knife stuck in his side wasn’t going to care that he went to the gym five times a week. The blade would cut through muscle, bone or sinew as easily as it
would fat. Stab vests only covered so much and he didn’t fancy another injury after only recently recovering from having a brick thrown at his shoulder.

The wimpy boy standing in front of him shaking didn’t seem to be a threat, though he would rather not take the chance.

‘Take your hands out of your pockets,’ Karl said. ‘Now stand over here under the street light.’

He could see that the driver was still uncomfortable in his presence, but by now it could as easily have been the cold causing him to hop from foot to foot.

‘Whose car is this?’ said Karl, poised to watch the answer as much as listen to it.

‘S’mine,’ came the reply. ‘Had it about six months. Why did you stop me?’

‘Your nearside brake light’s out,’ said Karl, pointing at the left-hand side of the car, eyes still on his jumpy detainee. ‘My colleague’s here now.’

He thumbed in the direction of the other police car which had pulled up behind his, aware that his inspector, Josh Walker, had sauntered up alongside him, and had simply uttered,
‘Morning.’

As he kept an eye on the driver who gave his name as Simon Terry, Karl made to move towards the Clio.

‘I’ve got insurance and everything,’ said Simon, seemingly finding his voice.

‘I know,’ said Karl. ‘I’ve already checked. If you hadn’t, I’d be getting your car recovered and you’d be walking home. In the meantime, I’m
having a look through your car.’

Simon opened his mouth to protest, his brain catching up with what he had been told about why he had been stopped and Karl’s reasons for looking in his car.

‘All right?’ said Karl, rewarded with a nod from Josh.

As he turned to the Clio he could hear Josh start to make small talk with Simon Terry, a man he had nothing in common with, apart from originating from the same species.

Confident that he would find a substance, an article, an object that should not be in the car because it broke the law, Karl began methodically to search every part of the interior, starting
with the black holdall.

He unzipped the bag and peered inside, disappointed when he found nothing of interest. Unperturbed, he continued in his systematic way, moving on to the glove compartment, the foot wells,
between the seats and the backs. Not one thing jumped out at him or gave him the adrenalin rush he was craving, deserving, expecting.

The very last place to be searched was the boot. This, he knew, had to be it. Karl glanced over at Simon chatting away to Josh. He had his arms wrapped tightly around himself and he could see
his breath as he jabbered away, making comment after comment about nothing in particular. Perhaps he had been wrong about him, perhaps he was losing his touch. If the boot failed to give him what
he was looking for, he had either misjudged the entire thing or the lad was better at concealing drugs than Karl had thought.

With one hand on the boot catch and the other holding his torch, Karl popped it open.

He shone the torch into the space and initially he saw nothing whatsoever. If anything, what stuck in his mind was that it was an incredibly empty boot. There wasn’t even the usual junk,
empty carrier bags, tools, cans, wrappers. He spent a few seconds waving his torch over the marked carpet and then several more working in a slow arc, left to right.

A glimmer caught his eye, a bounce from the torchlight which hit the object at about the same time as a sliver of information hit his brain.

If he wasn’t very much mistaken, what he was looking at was a plastic cable-tie. The very type put around Albert Woodville’s neck and tightened until he took his last breath.

Morning of Wednesday 24 November

‘You look like absolute crap,’ said Harry as he handed Josh Walker a cup of coffee.

Harry had insisted that he get Josh a drink, even though he protested that all he wanted to do was go home to bed.

‘I did fast turn-around from lates to nights with only one day off, and most of that I spent with you in the pub, listening to you moaning about your marriage. I’m bollocksed and you
give me coffee. That’ll help me sleep, if I ever get home.’

‘It’s only eight a.m. The traffic’ll be terrible now anyway so you may as well wait for nine. You could come to my briefing.’

‘Or I could not,’ said Josh, and took a sip of his coffee. ‘And this is rank.’

‘All right, Teddy Tired Eyes. It may not be Starbucks, but tell me again what happened.’

Josh had known Harry for far too long to think that for one moment he wasn’t going to act like a big child about to open the best early Christmas present he had ever had. He grimaced as he
took another taste of the vile beverage and settled down to tell the tale all over again.

‘Like I told you when I called you at five o’clock this morning, and don’t pull that face, at least you’ve had some sleep, Karl Roundtree carried out a check on a silver
Clio. I don’t think that he knew the relevance of that particular make and model but he certainly knew how Albert Woodville died. It’s not something that’s public knowledge but
he’s pretty sharp when it comes to stuff like that.

‘Anyway, the driver, Simon Terry, who you’ve now seen down in custody, seemed a bit nervy and on edge. I thought, as did Karl, that he had some drugs or something on him but it
turned out that he’d done a couple of drive-outs in the car from petrol-station forecourts with false and stolen plates on, that kind of thing. He also used to lend the car out to people.
That’s where it got interesting.’

Harry swallowed a mouthful of his coffee and screwed his face up at the taste.

‘Told you,’ said Josh. ‘Simon Terry was waffling on to me about people borrowing his car as Karl was searching it. There were no actual names forthcoming. At the time, it was
something that he declined to tell me.’

‘He’ll probably change his mind now though,’ said Harry. ‘What with him being in custody for murder. That usually does the trick refreshing people’s
memories.’

It was several seconds before Josh spoke again. He scrunched up one side of his mouth and put his head on one side. ‘Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep but I think that his reaction to
the plastic cable-tie in the boot was genuine. I mean, it’s not illegal to carry or have them, is it? He gave a kind of “so what” shrug when Karl asked him if it was his and if
he’d seen it before.’

Now it was Harry’s turn to sit and think about his answer as he rubbed at the stubble on the side of his face. ‘We’ve got the CSI looking over the car now for any traces of
Albert Woodville’s blood or DNA, and of course for traces of blood or DNA from whoever did him in. We’ve had four people in custody so far, who all know more than they’re letting
on, but not one of them was actually responsible for killing Woodville.

‘After nearly three weeks, this is most definitely the break we’ve been looking for. Oh and Josh, before you start on about how the foundation of all good police work is the uniform
stop-check, can I remind you that sooner or later we would have got a name.’