Rat Poison (12 page)

‘So, from what you said last time we spoke to you we know you were in Bath the night of the mass shootings and were part of a gang run by a London mobster who got his female sidekick to recruit men local to here to swell his numbers,' Carrick began. ‘You and your brother Billy were both shot and injured whereupon—'

There was an urgent-sounding rap on the door and DS Frank Keen put his head around it. ‘Phone call for you, sir.'

‘Can't you take it?' Carrick asked, frowning.

‘It's a private call.'

Carrick stopped the interview, asked Keen to stay with me and left the room. Jessop gave me a dirty leer.

‘Shoulder better?' I enquired breezily. Actually I was experiencing a pang of guilt: the man was still using a stick following the flesh wound I had caused him.

Moments later Carrick called to me from the doorway. When we were outside, he said, ‘It was Joanna. Her waters have broken and she's called an ambulance in case I can't get home in time to take her to the hospital. I
must
go.'

‘Go,' I urged. ‘She needs you. Give her our love.'

‘I'll have to postpone this again.'

‘It's not really fair on Jessop. Patrick's working on something in the main office. Can't he do it?'

For once Carrick did not pause to ponder. ‘Yes, you're quite right. I'll get him to come in.'

EIGHT

J
essop had cheered up visibly when told that there was to be a different interviewer and the smirk had returned. I saw no reason to spoil things for him. In fact, when the substitute entered the room he was met with a sneer. This might have been because earlier my husband had been out in the city centre walking the route of the gang war, endeavouring to re-enact what had happened in his mind and, judging by the state of the old T-shirt and jeans worn specially for the job, had crawled into various nooks and crannies in case scenes of crime personnel had missed anything.

Patrick, carrying the case file, dropped it on the table, introduced himself to our suspect, thanked the departing DS Keen and switched on the tape machine to listen to what had taken place in the past few minutes.

‘Any problems with that?' he asked the man before him.

‘Yes, I didn't say any of it.'

‘You did,' I told him. ‘I was there and wrote it down.'

‘Well, yer must have made it up then.'

‘Look, DCI Carrick will swear in court that's what you said.'

‘Then it just goes to show how corrupt you lot are, doesn't it?'

‘So you and Billy were ambushed by Afghan insurgents as you returned from Tesco's?' Patrick asked, opening the file and flipping through it. This was play-acting, he could probably quote large chunks of it from memory.

‘You're a real stupid arse, aren't you?' Jessop shouted.

‘Yes, I suppose I am. You're having to put up with a new boy, I'm afraid.'

‘We were on our way home after a few beers and got caught in crossfire.'

‘And all this stuff in the file about having your wallets stolen by the woman who hired you together with Billy's gun is also cobblers, is it?'

‘Yes,' Jessop answered grimly.

‘But you did have a gun. You tried to kill DCI Carrick with it when he came to talk to you.'

‘I panicked. I found it on the pavement when we was shot and used it to defend the pair of us.'

‘Completely innocent people don't normally hightail it away when they're hurt. They keep their heads down and pray for an ambulance.'

‘I thought they was going to kill us. I half-carried Billy and we got a taxi.'

No taxi drivers had come forward to report that they had transported anyone injured that night.

Patrick said, ‘And yet there's a witness who's identified both of you from mugshots as taking an active part in the war. Would you care to explain that?'

‘Who, the bloke in the shop doorway? He was only a down-and-out. A meths drinker. Stoned out of his skull most likely.'

‘He did mention running away and climbing over a wall into the car park of a university facility to get away from the murderous bunch going on the rampage. Not all that drunk then.' Patrick closed the file gently. ‘You know perfectly well the account accurately records what you said.'

‘OK, I made it up.'

‘Why concoct such a wild story if it wasn't true?'

‘Because they was leaning on me.' Jessop jerked his head in my direction. ‘Her and Carrick. Making threats if I didn't talk. I was feeling terrible so I said anything to get rid of 'em.'

Patrick leaned back in his seat and regarded Jessop narrowly. ‘Well, no, actually,' he said quietly. ‘Also in the room with you were three elderly patients who were watching television. Since you went to the remand centre Detective Sergeant Keen, who you saw just now, has been to the hospital to talk to male patients with whom you might have come into contact to see if you'd said anything that might be of interest to us. Two of those in question were still in hospital and they both said how you'd shouted and raved at the police who had come to interview you in the patients' lounge. They heard almost every word of what was said, mostly on account of turning the sound down on the TV as what was going on right there in the room was much more interesting. No threats were made; in fact, DCI Carrick stopped the interview when it was obvious you were feeling unwell.'

There was a longish silence.

‘Shall we begin again?' Patrick asked. Then, when nothing appeared to be forthcoming, he added, ‘I don't like it when people waste my time.'

Jessop, who had had his gaze stonily focused on the table top, glanced up and discovered that when his interrogator did not like something events could get rather  . . . unpleasant.

I was sitting next to Patrick but did not have to look at him to know what was going on and as intimated before I have never been able to discover how this sense of menace is achieved. It is just that, all at once, without his facial expression changing, it is there. I am Patrick's wife, have known him for almost always and love him to bits but when he is like this he is too big, too close, too damned dangerous.

‘You said you were a new boy,' Jessop muttered.

‘In a manner of speaking,' he was told. ‘I'm fairly new to the Serious Organized Crime Agency. Before that I worked for MI5.' He smiled humourlessly. ‘No restrictions there.'

Although nothing was actually said it was at this point that Jessop decided to cooperate. For the moment.

‘Charlie Gill's dead, by the way,' Patrick said in offhand fashion.

‘He was nothing to me,' Jessop said in an undertone. ‘Just a local villain who tried to look like some kind of Mr Big.'

‘Of course he was and I know you weren't working for him directly. I just mentioned it because I'm sure it was Uncle who had him savagely beaten and then killed with a single shot to the head. It gives you a better idea of what will happen if this crook and his murderous minder get a hold in Bath.'

‘Uncle?'

‘Yes, the London mobster. That's what people call him after he murdered his nephew. The woman who hired you and then stole your wallets was almost certainly Joy Murphy. She's probably a psychopath.'

‘Billy nearly died,' Jessop brooded. ‘They took me to see him and he didn't even know me.'

‘So they need banging up for just about for ever. What of Gilly Darke and her boyfriend, the one with ginger hair?'

‘They were Gill's people.'

‘Chums of yours?'

‘No, of course not! She's just a sozzled tart!'

‘What's his name?'

‘God knows. He was just known as Red. Always seemed to be whispering in corners with the bosses and treated the rest of us like dirt. I didn't see him at all after the second meeting.'

‘What did he look like?'

‘Short, thin, eyes like a ferret I once used to have. Shifty-like.'

‘What were his and Darke's roles then?'

‘Kind of organizing things. It was him what did it all, though. He insisted he brought her along so perhaps he had a quick screw with her when he felt like it. When there was a meeting  . . .'

‘Just keep talking,' he was urged when he stopped speaking. ‘I take it the meetings were between Gill's lot and the London gang to arrange the war.'

Jessop nodded.

‘Where were they held?'

‘In the back rooms of pubs.'

‘And Mick the Kick?'

‘He was tricked into coming into Bath that night. I don't know how.'

‘Does the name Adam Trelonic mean anything to you?'

‘I've been asked that before. No.'

To me, Patrick said, ‘Do we know the name Trelonic used for his social security scam?'

‘No, but it'll be in the records,' I replied.

‘I'll look later.' And then to Jessop, ‘Did you ever actually see this Uncle character?'

‘Yes, he was there once, with
her.
When she's not all smiles she's like something crazy in a Batman film.'

‘What does he look like?'

‘He's a square sort of bloke, short and broad. But he's not fat, it's all muscle. Blond – out of a bottle, mind. Little blue eyes – pig's eyes, now I come to think of it. Gave us all this crap about how soon we'd be rich men like him as long as we did as we was told.'

‘Has it crossed your mind since that he was hoping all the local opposition would shoot each other, leaving him with a nicely cleared-out manor?'

‘No, but  . . .' Jessop brooded some more and I could almost read his mind. That theory seemed all too likely now.

Patrick said, ‘Shall we start the story right from the beginning when Murphy was in a pub somewhere quietly asking drinkers if they fancied a job with lots of money, travel and excitement?'

The man stirred restlessly in his seat. ‘It was Billy what got spoke to and took the job. I just went along that night to keep an eye on him.'

‘Oh?'

‘That's the truth.'

‘According to Carlton Huggins's wife it was Derek someone her husband told her was in the pub.'

‘Huggins! That load of thievin' tinkers!'

‘She's lying then?'

‘None of them have spoken a true word in their lives!'

‘Why would she lie?'

‘How the hell should I know?'

‘The woman has no reason to lie; she doesn't even know who you are.'

Jessop's right fist came flying but the hand was caught and smashed down on to the table.

‘I know what this is all about,' Patrick said in a deadly whisper, his face inches from the other man's, the hand still in a tight grip. ‘You and that overgrown brat brother of yours played a much bigger part in the shootings than we have so far thought.' He added, for the benefit of the tape, that the suspect had just attempted to strike him.

There was a short silence during which Jessop obviously wished fervently he was somewhere else. Finally, he was released.

‘Let's think what that might be,' Patrick went on. ‘We have these two men who we think are of mid-European extraction who were cornered in Abbey Churchyard, easily shot because they had run out of ammunition and who were then, possibly while still alive, knifed to the extent of being disembowelled. No one's a lousy shot at point-blank range, Jessop, and that's what we're talking about here. I reckon that was you and Billy boy and then Murphy did the fancy knife-work. It was after this, when you were running through the Stall Street area blasting at everyone who moved that the pair of you were wounded. Did you pick off the waitress going home from work and the stage hand whose body was found in a skip? And then when you'd been taken out Murphy relieved you of one of the weapons they'd given you and your money just to tidy things up a little.'

‘I didn't do nothing to people just goin' home!' Jessop shouted, visibly trembling.

‘But you killed the other two, didn't you? Quite safe targets too, no risk to you at all. Perfect for beginners to try their hand on, eh?'

‘I want a solicitor,' Jessop said, barely audibly.

‘Is that a confession?'

‘They  . . . they was armed though, wasn't they? We didn't know they'd run out of ammo. All I saw was two nasty little gypsy types. It was them or us. Besides, she made us do it.'

‘You're going to need your solicitor.'

‘It's all falling into place,' I said over coffee in the canteen.

‘Too slowly,' Patrick said, pulling a face after draining the polystyrene cup.

‘Have you had time to look into the info you wrote down in the pub last night?'

‘No. But I did look up the registration of the car. It was Carol Trelonic's. In her name, not her husband's.'

‘So she and Andrews  . . .' Words failed me for a moment.

‘Unless she lent the vehicle to someone.'

Adam Trelonic had used the name Brian Law, a false identity acquired from ‘a bloke in a pub' from whom he had bought stolen credit cards, a passport and a cheque book. For this Trelonic had served a six-month jail sentence.

But when asked about this, Jessop, awaiting the arrival of someone to represent him who we gathered was on her way, refused to answer. When interviewed later he still refused to give the names of anyone with whom he and Billy had been involved. Patrick had to resign himself to this for now as he could not utilize the methods he once did when working for MI5 in order to get to the truth.

‘Trelonic's dead but I still want to drop him right in it,' he admitted.

‘Please don't let it become personal,' I said.

‘I'm sure that wife of his knows all about what he got up to and is even involved herself.'

‘There must have been a PM. Usually there are chemical residues if someone's fired a gun.'

‘Yes, lead, barium, antimony and soot. I've already looked up the PM findings and there were no residues found on the body or clothing. But that doesn't mean he didn't fire a weapon as there only has to be a breeze or crosswind that blows any traces away for the test to show a negative result. He'd been killed by two shots in the back from fairly close range.'