Rat Poison (21 page)

Carrick looked relieved. He indicated the report. ‘Shall I get a copy of this sent to Greenway?'

‘We emailed it to him last night. He told me that surveillance points to the pair of them still being in London.'

‘Even better. The Met can arrest them then.'

I said, ‘We also have a tentative link to Adam Trelonic, someone Billy remembered calling himself Brian.'

‘But we need to be really careful there, don't we?' Carrick observed. ‘His widow's promised to make trouble at Hinton Littlemoor if we keep questioning her and until we have more evidence there's no point in doing so. We must be dead sure of his involvement before we try to make any connections as far as she's concerned.'

‘The photograph of us taken on our wedding day that was in Murphy's flat was in all the Bath papers,' I told him. ‘Carol Trelonic could easily have accessed it from records and sent it to Murphy.'

‘Murphy's pure poison,' the DCI murmured, an unusually emotive remark from such a pragmatic detective.

It shortly emerged that the Metropolitan Police had already put in place plans to arrest Northwood and Murphy and it had been discovered that previous intelligence had been wrong and the latter was living in an attic room that overlooked the road at the front of the Hammersmith property. We set off for London, Michael Greenway having said that we deserved to be ‘in at the kill', as he put it. He made a point of adding that he had ‘thrown his weight about' to ensure our presence.

It was to be the usual small hours raid, SOCA officially being there as observers, no more, and we would only be permitted to enter the house once arrests had been made. So, two hours after midnight the next day, we duly found ourselves loaded as cargo into the back of an unmarked van, one of several vehicles, and travelling blind as there were no windows in the rear of it, jammed in like battery hens with several heavily armoured members of an unspecified incident unit. I felt that should one of them so much as sneeze I would suffer several cracked ribs.

On arrival in a side street that I overheard someone say was a hundred yards from the target they all piled out, taking with them a battering down doors implement and other nameless devices. Under orders from a terse and also anonymous officer in charge, we stayed put. But after several long minutes the inside of the van, despite the brief opening of the doors, became extremely stuffy and still redolent of far too many brewed-up blokes.

‘I didn't bring my sonic screwdriver,' Patrick muttered, having tried the door handle to no avail.

‘Well, you can't shoot your way out as it might warn Uncle and co.,' I said, knowing the way his mind works and hoping to nip that idea smartly in the bud.

‘Perhaps it's just stuck,' Patrick said when another stifling five minutes had elapsed. ‘I'll pull down the handle and we'll both throw ourselves at it.'

This we did and bounced painfully back where we had started from.

‘Again!' Patrick said.

Nursing a bruised shoulder I then noticed a ventilator grille in the partition between the cab and the rest of the interior. It was closed. I slid it open with little improvement as the windows in the front were probably all shut as well.

‘I think I'd far rather be sacked for buggering up the raid than suffocate,' my working partner announced. Grabbing someone's discarded anorak he pushed his Glock down one sleeve, forming a muffler with that and as well as he was able with the rest of the garment, tucking it into the interior bracing struts of the door. I was waved from the immediate area.

There was a loud boom that would have awakened several cemeteries and one door flew open to smash back against the rear of the vehicle. Observed from the outside moments later it did not look as though it would readily serve its intended purpose again.

‘We'll probably have to walk back,' Patrick said absent-mindedly after taking several deep breaths, tucking the weapon back in the shoulder harness.

London seemed to be going about its normal 2.45 a.m. business – that is, not much. Nobody appeared to be leaning out of windows, no one came running and I came to the conclusion that the noise had been fairly well contained by the body of the van and had possibly sounded like a vehicle backfiring. Despite having put my hands over my ears though they were still ringing.

‘Which way did they go?' Patrick asked.

‘No idea.'

‘Do your oracle thing.'

‘Look, I'm not some kind of cop detection gizmo,' I snapped.

His teeth gleamed white as he grinned at me in the deep shade beneath a tree. Ye gods, how the man loves this kind of enterprise.

‘I think
they
might
have gone this way,' I told him, pointing in the direction of the main road, which was around fifty yards away. In truth, I had no idea.

We set off, not really hurrying and, as far as I was concerned, quite content for other people to do the rough stuff. Something did tell me, however, that getting hold of Brad Northwood and his seriously bent harpy was unlikely to be this easy.

‘I hope Matthew's not bored,' Patrick murmured. ‘I'd hate it if he thought we'd just shovelled him off somewhere out of the way.'

‘We'll have to get him a better computer for Christmas. Perhaps Benedict's letting him use his.'

‘Lads don't usually want to share things like that.'

In the distance, moments later and from the direction of the main road there were thumps and then a crash like the sound of a front door being smashed in. Then came the staccato cracks of three shots being fired quite close by. We ran.

On the corner before the wider thoroughfare we paused for a careful look at what was going on around to the right, the direction from which the shots had seemed to come. There was the wail of sirens in the distance, closing rapidly, but not necessarily anything to do with what was going on here. Suddenly there was the pounding of feet, approaching on the run.

‘Stop!' Patrick bellowed, taking a stand on the pavement. ‘Police!'

There was a loud report as a gun was fired. Patrick spun around and I thought for a ghastly moment that he had been hit but it was a feint and as the gunman tore past, almost touching him, he was in a perfect position to strike him on the nape of the neck with the side of his hand. I ran out and collided heavily with someone else, a woman, who uttered a scream, choked off by the crook of Patrick's arm around her throat.

‘Do we have handcuffs?' Patrick enquired of me.

‘No, just a few cable ties,' I replied.

‘Do you always carry cable ties, just in case?'

‘Only as of yesterday.'

The man, not unconscious but staying where he was on the pavement, was short and powerfully built with fair hair. His companion, wiry with short dark hair, looked mad enough to spontaneously combust.

They were the wrong people.

Wanted to help with other enquiries, no doubt, but still the wrong people. They had been the inhabitants of Uncle's house that the police had recently been painstakingly monitoring, a couple closely resembling Northwood and Murphy. When this had been finally established back at the house after a full search had been made, which took over two hours while we kicked our heels, the Met gathered them up, expressed disappointment about their van and said they would be sending SOCA the bill. Everyone went away and we never saw any of them again.

In the first light of dawn we walked what seemed to be rather a long way back to our hotel.

‘They switched over four days ago,' Michael Greenway told us when we saw him later in the morning after having had a couple of hours' sleep. ‘And to be fair the replacements have been going in and out hiding their faces as much as possible with hats and, during the recent rain, umbrellas.'

‘All clichés along the lines of the birds having flown will be savagely punished,' Patrick muttered to himself.

‘Coffee,' the commander decided after a quick glance at his subordinate. ‘Did you have breakfast?' he followed this up with.

We said we had not.

‘Croissants then.' Never one to go to the door and shout or expect anyone to come running he went away and asked his PA to fix it.

‘They're talking then,' I said when he returned.

‘Non-stop apparently and now anxious to distance themselves from any connection with serious crime lords,' Greenway answered.

‘But he
was
armed,' Patrick said.

‘It was his own weapon. The idiot even bragged about it. Some kind of tinpot Mr Fixit. We know all about him and God knows he's stupid enough to be recruited for the job without knowing who he's really working for – if he's even heard of Northwood. That hasn't been established yet.'

‘What about the woman?' I asked.

‘Just a hooker he knew – she's a drug addict – who was glad to stay in someone else's house, all paid for, plus a little pocket money for as long as required.'

‘Do we know how this man was recruited?'

‘Word of mouth – or so he's saying. He's not too stupid to know the best plan is to keep your mouth shut about certain matters.'

‘Would you like me to talk to him?' Patrick enquired.

‘The Met's still working on him and I don't think anything valuable would come of your having a go as well. Uncle's far too clever to leave a trail of useful information with his bum-wipers.'

‘So where the hell
are
they then?'

‘I'm rather hoping that you'll find out. You're free to go and take a look around Northwood's place even though I've been given to understand that it's been gone over very thoroughly already.' He gave me one of his big smiles. ‘Ingrid, you've been known to find things that other people have missed.'

‘He'll have other bolt holes to go to,' Patrick said. ‘And probably won't ever return to Hammersmith to pick up his stuff except when the Met's gone to their effin' Christmas party.'

Luckily our coffee arrived just then.

‘No pressure then,' I said as we approached the Hammersmith house.

‘You've given everyone very good leads in the past,' Patrick said, definitely in a jauntier frame of mind. ‘But don't worry about evidence against them, the Met can work on that. All we want is to find out where they're hiding out now.'

There were the usual strands of incident tape draped between lamp posts and other street furniture and a torpid with boredom constable on duty at the door. Patrick flashed his warrant card, actually his driving licence, at the man and then gave him a furious and expletive-laden lambasting for letting us through. No, he really was not still in a mood, just an ex-military man who loathes lax security and sloppy conduct.

We went in and I walked into the first room I came to. Patrick knows my methods and left me alone to undertake his own investigations. The furniture: two large sofas, several chairs, a bookcase, empty but for a couple of cartons that had once held computing kit, and another set of shelves loaded with news-papers and magazines, was scruffy and had probably come with the property. The general impression was one of bareness, of no personal possessions.

Sliding doors partitioned this room from the one to the rear of it, once a dining room perhaps but now used as some kind of further living space with two more sofas, the fabric covers torn and stained as though a dog had been shut in here and taken out its frustration on them. The curtains were half-closed and gave a limited view of an overgrown garden. In my experience serious criminals never garden, they are too busy making money and other people's lives a misery. I mentioned this theory to Patrick once and he thought it fanciful. I'm sticking to it.

The kitchen was filthy, the rubbish bin stinking and overflowing, the sink piled high with unwashed mugs and plates. There was no cutlery and the fridge had next to nothing in it but for a couple of ready meals, some milk and half a sliced loaf. A utility room off the kitchen contained a washing machine plus a muddle of old shoes and coats, mostly on the floor, all mixed up with more newspapers dated weeks previously and several battered empty cardboard boxes.

I wandered back into the hallway, taking my time, and then slowly went up the stairs. There were three bedrooms, one obviously in recent use and squalid with dirty bedding, discarded clothing – again mostly on the floor, a cheap DIY wardrobe that was falling apart, a chest of drawers, ditto, and several suitcases that the police had obviously emptied out and rammed back the contents any which way. The other two rooms, discounting the bathroom, did not look as though they had been used since the place was let, the beds stripped, a couple of built-in cupboards empty, the only other item an exercise bicycle, broken by the look of it, dumped in one corner.

Patrick called to me from the top of a narrow staircase that led to the top floor. ‘This is quite interesting.'

‘There's nothing interesting anywhere else,' I said. ‘Northwood's moved out.'

‘So has Murphy.'

This gallery was not dedicated to shooting but graffiti. I have no eye for such an activity but this looked very, very bad and was executed in what looked like lipstick, marker pens in various colours and something that was probably leftover emulsion paint. The subject matter, which was on practically every wall of the attic room, could be described as a marriage between the highly obscene and Gothic horror.

‘She
is
raving mad,' I declared, ducking to avoid a particularly luxuriant festoon of black cobwebs, real, that also resided up here. Perhaps they had made the woman feel more at home.

‘There's not one atom of a clue as to where they've gone,' Patrick said, slamming the last drawer on a built-in unit. He went over to a small door in the far wall that must give access to the rest of the roof space.

‘Do be careful,' I warned.

‘The Met have already gone over everything. They'd have triggered any nasty surprises.'