Dark Side (21 page)

‘God knows.'

‘Any hammers, mauls or medieval bludgeons normally kept in the boot of your car?'

‘I always keep a few tools in a vehicle as you never know when you might need them.'

‘So do I. But a hammer?'

‘Yes.'

Patrick found his mobile and dialled Lynn Outhwaite's work number. She promised to look out the list of contents of the car in the case file and, a couple of minutes later, rang him back.

‘Several tools in a polythene carrier bag but no hammer,' Patrick reported.

‘Bloody hell,' Carrick muttered.

‘Right,' I said briskly. ‘I suggest we work on the theory that, under orders, Kev struck Cooper down. A thicko like him might have chucked the weapon as far as possible before anyone could stop him. It's likely that Cooper was taken to the tip with a view to killing him, as perhaps for some reason or other he'd become a nuisance to them. Or they might just have felt like murdering someone as a jolly thing to do. The tip area's been searched but what about adjoining properties and gardens?'

Patrick contacted Lynn again and it emerged that, once knowing the full PM findings, she had taken the initiative in extending the search, which was still ongoing. Complicated by the existence of surrounding warehouses with extensive yards, one of which had been partly demolished and the rubble left lying there, even examining an area within what might be regarded as the distance a man might throw something small and heavy would take at least another two days.

‘She'll make DI, easily,' Carrick said quietly.

‘You mustn't forget Paul Mallory,' I reminded them. ‘Has he done a runner thinking he might be a suspect?
Is
he a suspect, in fact?'

This last remark of mine became academic because, the following morning, James called in to the police station at Manvers Street with a view to talking to Campbell and agreed to be officially interviewed. Again the men had a serious argument, really serious according to Lynn, which ended with the DI arresting Carrick for Cooper's murder and releasing him on police bail pending further enquiries.

‘Greenway says it's none of our business unless it gets in the way of my brief,' Patrick told me, having called the commander to keep him up to date. ‘That's what he has to say, of course, but I thought he might have been a bit more helpful under the counter in view of the fact that he knows Carrick quite well. But he's under huge pressures at work due to the merging of SOCA into the National Crime Agency.'

Restlessly, he paced the room, trying to excuse his boss, act in a cool professional manner and keep his promise to Carrick, not to mention being a good, as in responsible, husband and family man.

And failing utterly.

‘Ingrid …' he began.

‘I know,' I said when he stopped speaking.

‘I shall have to forget that I'm a cop in order to sort this out.'

‘Please be careful,' I implored.

He left the room, perhaps not having heard me, already working on tactics.

The dark side.

I was praying that Patrick would not embark on anything just yet as he was distinctly unwell. The cracked ribs would take a few weeks to heal properly but he would not wait that long and as soon as he felt better he would proceed. None of this had been discussed and I have known him long enough now for such a conversation to be unnecessary. Therefore, with difficulty, the oracle shut up shop and waited.

This was not to say that I was excluded, for while it was true that, over the next couple of days, a weekend, he spent quite a lot of time at the Carricks' home, the pair of us worked during the evenings going over the case files, looking for more weak links. It went without saying that the DCI would be excluded from whatever Patrick intended to do as, physical fitness apart, he would severely risk his career if he was involved. As far as weak links went there was already one: Hamsworth's conceit; his being the all-powerful Raptor. The files were courtesy of Lynn Outhwaite, perhaps going against Campbell's instructions, although nothing was said. She seemed to be prepared to risk her own future prospects in order to get to the truth.

They – Lynn's team – had also examined the copies of the contents of the file we had found at Jingles: staff rotas, salary records and time sheets, but there were no personal details or addresses listed. Not a lot of use, then.

We were thus brainstorming on the second evening, having decided to target Hamsworth's oafish retinue who had ambushed us at the night club – if they were the mobster's ex-services retinue Patrick swore to eat every hat in the house – and had written down as detailed descriptions of them as we could remember when Patrick's work mobile rang. It immediately became clear to me that the person on the other end of the line was Susan Smithson, the widow of the Met CID officer who had, supposedly, committed suicide.

‘She wants to talk,' Patrick said at the end of the call, having promised to ring her straight back. ‘As soon as possible. A trip to London would fit in nicely. I'm sure that's where Hamsworth and Co. have gone. Coming?'

‘You're not fit enough yet,' I told him.

‘This is only about talking to Mrs Smithson and looking at mugshots at HQ.'

We both knew it would not end there.

‘Of course,' I said.

Mrs Smithson had asked us to meet her at the Black Horse in Ilford, the public house where she worked five nights a week, and it had been arranged that we would be there at twelve-thirty the following day. We decided to drive as the Range Rover, otherwise referred to as the battle bus for good reason, is very useful as a miniature HQ. Firearms can be kept in a secret compartment only accessible by us, the security code needed to open it changed every month, and we keep spare clothing, overnight bags and other equipment in the car at all times. There is also the added advantage of a designated space in SOCA's underground car park together with an official pass exempting the vehicle from the city's congestion charge.

The woman had arrived before us and was sitting in a corner of the saloon bar. This, she immediately explained, was because she did not want to have to get into conversation with the regulars who usually patronized the public bar. She seemed ill at ease and not just, I thought, because of this. If my memory was as good as everyone keeps telling me it is, she was wearing exactly the same outfit as when we had first met her.

‘Hope I haven't dragged you here for nothing,' she continued. ‘The traffic's horrible round here on Monday mornings.'

Patrick's natural caution – when interviewing anyone with even the most tenuous connection with crime never allow them to get a glimpse of your private transport – had, as before, caused him to park at least a quarter of a mile away and we had walked from there. Although the M4 had been very quiet when we had left at just after four-thirty that morning she was quite correct: the road outside the pub was gridlocked.

Patrick bought a round of drinks, having to forego the East Anglian bitter on offer on account of his medication and suffering fruit juice instead.

‘You know when we last spoke I hinted that I sometimes wondered what Jonno got up to?' Mrs Smithson went on hesitantly.

We both obediently nodded.

‘Well, this is terrible seeing I'm his mother and all that, but I'm beginning to think he
really
is up to no good. It made me furious, and quite upset actually, when he came out as bold as brass that he'd been seeing his dad like that. And without telling me! I mean, I'd have given him a message to take to him, saying that I wished he'd come back and how sorry I was and how much I missed him. But the little toad didn't and I'd like to know why. The problem – my problem – is that Jonno has money, quite a lot of it. I found it in the wardrobe when I was cleaning his room and putting stuff away the other day – he chucks his clothes all over the floor. There it was on a shelf right in front of my eyes: a wad of notes, more money than I've ever had in my entire life. And he never—' Here she broke off, struggling with tears.

‘But with no job?' I asked quietly, aware that I should be the one to speak here.

‘Nothing that I know of,' she replied after wiping her eyes and taking a sip of her half of shandy. ‘But he goes out more now and comes in at all hours, drunk sometimes by the way he bangs about. I don't ask – I don't dare to now as he's recently changed from the Jonno he used to be. Treats me as though I'm just his landlady. Wants his meals at times to suit him even when I'm working. It's actually very upsetting.'

And here she did burst into tears, sobbing silently into a paper handkerchief.

‘D'you know where he is now?' Patrick enquired when the worst was over.

She shook her head. ‘Sorry, no, he went out at around ten this morning.'

‘Does he have any kind of routine?'

‘No, just comes and goes. He seems to just use the back way now, sneaky-fashion. I suppose I should have expected something like this as he bunked off school whenever he could and didn't do any good at exams. I did warn him but he still seemed to spend most of his time hanging around on street corners with the kind of yobbos who make me want to scream.'

‘Is there anything else in connection with this that's adding to your fears? Strangers calling for him? Phone calls that he's secretive about?'

‘He spends a lot of time in his room talking on his mobile now and if it rings when I'm around he takes it somewhere else. Haven't had any odd bods calling round, though.'

‘Can he drive?' I asked.

‘No, he's never had the money for lessons – not until now, anyway – and neither have I since Paul and I split up. After he died his car was only fit for scrap.'

‘Has he ever dealt in drugs, do you know?' Patrick asked.

‘Not that I know of. But I was just coming to that as it crossed my mind when I saw the money and I remembered from police programmes on the telly that notes can be tested for drugs. So I pinched one of the tenners to give you. He won't miss it out of that lot.'

She took out her purse, removed it from a compartment that appeared to have nothing else in it and gave it to him. It was folded into four and Patrick, holding it by one corner, dropped it into a small plastic evidence envelope, a few of which I always have in the pockets of my ‘working' jacket, together with plastic gloves.

Patrick thanked her and said, ‘This alone probably couldn't be used in court as evidence as it's been handled too much, but if there are traces of drugs on it then it might act as a pointer while we're working on a couple of cases. It goes without saying, of course, that there's absolutely no evidence that your son is involved in crime.'

‘But he's keeping it very secret, isn't he?' Sue protested. ‘Surely if he'd won the lottery or done well on a horse he'd tell his mum and share some of it with her.' Again, tears threatened.

‘Strictly speaking, I should give you a receipt for this,' Patrick continued. ‘But under the circumstances I think it will be safer if I don't. You'll have to trust me.'

‘Oh, I trust you all right. Paul was a cop too, wasn't he?'

Had we travelled over a hundred miles merely to learn that a lazy and uncouth man who was beastly to his mother had money stashed away in his wardrobe?

W
e had checked into the rather good hotel we often use when in town, the thinking being that there is no harm in projecting a tourist image when engaged in undercover crime-fighting. After dinner, Patrick went out. Continuing to play the successful novelist living the high life – hey, it meant I could wear my long black dress with glittery bits – and waiting for my husband to return, I sat in the lobby, flicking through magazines and making a glass of Chablis last a long time. As writers do, I find people-watching entertaining as well as valuable and was able to store away a few details for future use, including a woman having either a very bad hair day or whose wig was askew, who arrived so drunk that she required two others to keep her more or less upright. They, grim of visage, steered their squirm-factor fifty companion towards the lifts.

We had spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon looking at mugshots at HQ, and would have to carry on the next day, trying to identify the four men at Jingles with Hamsworth and Kev. We had two possible matches, one who had a squint and another a long scar running down his face from the outside corner of his left eye to his chin. The former was known for grievous bodily harm and drug dealing, had been released from prison within the past six months; the latter had been outside for three years but had form for affray, robbery with violence and burglary. The remaining two would be more difficult to try to put a name to.

I had a long wait but was not unduly concerned, and was forced to have another glass of wine. Patrick arrived at just after eleven-thirty, by which time I was seriously considering going to bed. He looked the same as when he had gone out, very elegant in his black suit, matching shirt and pearl-grey tie, betraying no hint that he had driven out to Ilford with the express purpose of mugging Jonno Smithson – having got changed and worn his balaclava, of course. He went to the adjoining bar to get himself a tot of single malt and then joined me on the long leather sofa.

‘And?' I queried as our eyes met.

‘Got his phone, his wallet with a small wad of money, and believe it or not a debit card of his mother's was in it – and a knife. I left him his wristwatch.'

‘A
knife
?'

‘One of those nasty cheap things that's sold as a hunters' knife.'

‘What did you do with him?'

‘Put him where he belonged, in someone's wheelie bin.'

I knew that these items – Patrick would have been wearing gloves – were now in evidence bags and, the following morning, the phone would be taken to SOCA's HQ, where he has a contact who would ‘dissect' it for information and arrange traces on past calls. The other items would go to the lab, although unless the knife could be connected with other crimes it was not likely to be useful. Also, more than aware that the man in my life carries such a weapon, an Italian throwing knife, for added self-defence which has saved our lives on more than one occasion, I very much doubted that he had threatened Jonno with it, as he would regard that as bringing himself down to the level of common criminals, and besides, he does not need to.