Rat Poison (3 page)

‘I know
of
him,' Patrick mused. ‘They're right, he's far from avuncular, more the murdering bastard.'

I said, ‘So was this just a weekend trip for him or is he controlling the gang trying to move into the area?'

‘You can be sure that it's my first priority to find that out,' Carrick answered. ‘Lynn did absolutely the right thing in not trying to arrest him or call for assistance. He was with several other people who will now be of extreme interest to me as well.'

‘Did she recognize any of them too?'

‘Yes, there was a local bad boy by the name of Charlie Gill; at least, that's one of the identities he's been known to use. Another was a Cardiff-based mobster who once killed a girlfriend he thought was cheating on him by mowing her down with his car, and there was a woman whose name escapes me for the moment who has more convictions for soliciting and being drunk and disorderly than you'd believe possible. She was with a man with red hair who I don't recognize from Lynn's description. The other member of the party was the woman with Uncle and until I find out who she is I'm going to refer to her as Auntie.'

‘What about the contact phone numbers?' Patrick enquired.

‘Phoney. Lynn's furious, saying she wished she'd grabbed him, until I told her that she would probably be on a mortuary table right now if she'd tried.'

‘So you're working weekends because of all this?' Patrick enquired casually.

‘At the moment,' the DCI replied shortly, adding: ‘It's not the only case ongoing. You're obviously not.'

‘No, it doesn't happen very often. I'm probably going to be sent up to Manchester next week. Someone we investigated at MI5 has retired from trying to blackmail MPs and gone into extortion and money laundering for drug dealers instead.'

‘And Greenway's hoping that when he catches sight of you again he'll head straight back to the hills?' Carrick said with a big smile.

‘No, when we locate him this time we're going to heave him straight back in the slammer.'

Meanwhile, SOCA, in receipt of an official request from someone at Avon and Somerset Police HQ, a new man who Carrick had never heard of, sent me to liaise between the Met and his team on what had become known, hardly surprisingly, as the Bath Turf War Case.

This had not happened before as, officially, Patrick and I work together. But the job up north was mostly routine and involved, initially, his investigating the present whereabouts of known contacts of the person in question that MI5 still had on file. Gaining access to this information was not difficult as Patrick's old boss at D12, Richard Daws, was now inhabiting the rarefied air at the summit of SOCA, and it was for this reason and the former's familiarity with the past cases that he was being sent to Manchester. It was not thought that he would be there for very long.

Patrick, on hearing of my new assignment, was not happy for at least two reasons.

‘Look, I shall just be on the end of phones and computers collating information,' I told him, endeavouring to deal with one of his reservations. ‘
Not
packing hardware at stake-outs and other wildly exciting things that cops love doing. Besides which, it'll mean I can keep my finger on the pulse of events at home.'

Grimly, as he does not like it if we are on duty apart either, my husband left even earlier than normal on Monday morning, taking the car as I did not really need it in the short term. He had made me promise that I would contact him,
immediately,
if I became embroiled in anything with which I could not cope. Slightly shaken by his apparent conviction that this would happen, I took the short-barrelled Smith and Wesson that he had never returned to MI5 from the wall safe pronto, loaded it and put it in my handbag. Most of my bags, even the Gucci one, smell of gun oil.

I settled into a routine of spending the mornings at Bath's Manvers Street police station where I was given a cubbyhole with a desk in it just off the general office. A DI Black from Bristol came and went and I liaised with him as he knew about the Bristol-based mobsters. Together with Black, Carrick invited me to attend all briefings, whether they were pertinent to the case I was working on or not, which was kind of him although I had an idea he secretly hoped I would come up with a Big Idea breakthrough. Sadly, this did not happen.

As Carrick had said, most available resources were being allocated to the shootings. As was normal in such serious cases one wall of the general office, deliberately kept bare for this specific purpose, was host to maps, diagrams, information that had been gleaned, including photographs, where available, of the dead – those known to have taken part in the ‘war' and their victims. Where these people had fallen was marked on a large and detailed map of the city centre. Also, arrows marked the assumed, assisted by the homeless man's brief account, movement through the streets of the skirmish and the murders which followed afterwards. This man had so far not been traced.

A week went by during which slow progress, mostly of the eliminating from enquiries variety, was made. Then the woman in hospital had a setback to her recovery and had to undergo more surgery which meant that she could still not be interviewed. I knew that Carrick was extremely frustrated by this as he had been hoping she would be able to give him valuable information.

Regular communications with Manchester had been established. Patrick seemed to have got his teeth into what he was working on, fuelled, I was sure, by his extreme distaste of the man he was investigating, who had a nasty penchant for drug-fuelled violence. There was no point in his coming home at weekends as he was working Saturdays to get the job done quickly.

Then DS Lynn Outhwaite went horse riding on a day's leave, fell off and broke her right leg in two places.

I was first made aware of this when Carrick marched past where I was working – it was just after nine thirty in the morning – and slammed into the large room, the general office, next door. He emerged almost immediately, went back the way he had come, having given me the merest of glances on the way by, and then reappeared framed in the entrance to where I was working.

‘It's a complete disaster!' he declared, having given me the news. ‘She can't work with her leg in plaster even if she hadn't hurt her face as well and suffered a black eye and grazes.'

‘Is she still in hospital?' I asked.

‘No, at home, or at least, at her mother's.'

‘You have that address?'

He seemed a bit thrown by the question. ‘Yes  . . . of course.'

‘Flowers then. Shall I organize them for you?'

‘Er – yes  . . . please.'

‘Who will take over her job?'

‘There isn't anyone spare or with the seniority. Some of the team are going flat out on other stuff. But I might be able to get someone on loan from HQ in a couple of days' time.'

‘Then I could give you a hand until it happens – that's if you want me to.'

Never one to rush headlong into decisions, he thought about it for a few moments. ‘I'd have to get the OK from Greenway.'

So would I.

I decided, after this had been immediately forthcoming – the commander seemed really keen so perhaps was hoping for some kind of inside intelligence, although I could not imagine what – that my change of role represented demotion so I would have to watch what I said, especially in front of others. Carrick, to his credit, made no comment on the matter. As far as the Smith and Wesson was concerned I regarded that as part of the package he was getting.

The DCI was still trying to establish the identities of the remaining two out of the five men who had been shot and killed during the gun battle, not the pair who had been found mutilated, also still unidentified. One theory regarding these latter two was that they might have been illegal immigrants and, as Carrick had already surmised, part of the ‘invading' gang, hence the horrible retribution.

‘So who won?' I asked when we were on our way, in Carrick's car, to an address in Southdown St Peter, the village locally regarded by everyone who did not live there as being the home of all iniquity, past, present and no doubt future. ‘If this Uncle character was in a five-star restaurant was he celebrating victory?'

‘He might have been if most of the dead were on the opposing side. Lynn said there was plenty of champagne drunk. If so you almost have to admire the man's nerve.'

‘You still don't have any evidence that he's involved, though.'

‘No, not yet.'

‘Am I correct in guessing that we're on our way to visit the Huggins clan?'

‘We are,' Carrick agreed succinctly. ‘They might just know something about this Trelonic character.'

I was wondering if a little backup might be required when he added, ‘We went in with a search warrant yesterday and took the whole place apart, picking up two of the lads on account of finding half a shedful of stolen property. It pays to turn the place over occasionally, especially when there's been a robbery. They're all as thick as two short planks and haven't quite worked out that to keep the stuff at home, even for just one night, is a very bad idea.'

‘I met some of these people not so long ago – Patrick and I helped you arrest them.'

‘Oh, yes, the antiques job. That was Carlton Huggins and two of his sons, Ricky and Riley. They're still on remand. Yesterday I pulled in Darrell and Shane, Carlton's brothers. That leaves sundry weans and womenfolk – common-law wives, hangers-on, girlfriends, call them what you will – and Clem, Carlton's youngest son who will have probably bunked off school, again, and will see the inside of a young offenders' establishment soon if he doesn't change his ways. It's inevitable.'

‘It's sad though, isn't it?'

‘I suppose so, but it's in their genes – the whole boiling lot are descended from tinkers and horse thieves who were bothering Somerset over a hundred years ago. One of them was the last man to be hanged at a crossroads, nationally. The attitude seems to be that it's what they do. How else do you get money when the social security scams have all been found out? When they start thieving, handling stolen goods and threatening people it's my job to lock them up.'

Carrick was still distinctly put out, a bit adrift even, by the loss of his assistant but here was the usual pragmatic policeman talking: I had an idea Patrick would have the same attitude. Clem was in Matthew's class at school.

Where the Hugginses lived was like a small colony: caravans, huts and trailers of various sizes clustered around what had once been a council house on a corner site with a large garden. None-too-clean washing was hanging out on several lines which were tied to trees or leaning poles. A couple of dogs, snarling and barking at us, were tied up too; mostly, Carrick told me afterwards, on account of the likelihood that they would kill one another otherwise.

‘I'm going to ask whoever's here if they know anything about this shoot-out too,' the DCI was saying. ‘They may not as it's not quite their scene. But the grapevine might be alive and well in this rats' nest.'

‘And give the impression that cooperation will result in you taking a more favourable attitude to their menfolk's present difficulties?' I ventured.

‘Yes, something like that.'

‘And will you?'

He paused in walking up what could not really be described as a path that meandered between general rubbish towards the house and gave me a straight look.

That had to be a ‘no' then.

Already this venture of mine into coalface policing was proving to be an eye-opener. Previously my involvement with preserving Her Majesty's peace and law enforcement, MI5 and SOCA, had been concerned with what I can only describe as the ‘exotic' variety where I had been dealing with mostly sophisticated and clever criminals, albeit ruthless and vicious ones, who were often also wealthy and influential people in their spare time. Here was ‘subsistence' crime, those brazenly and illegally fighting for survival.

‘The whole place reeks of poverty,' I muttered, glimpsing the worried faces of a couple of women as they peeped fleetingly from caravan windows.

‘It's deliberate,' Carrick said with relish. ‘So social services don't get an inkling of how much money they've really got stashed away.'

He picked up a stone from the path and rapped on the battered front door with it, sending the dogs into a frenzy. I expected the knock to be ignored but, moments later, the door was flung open by an enormously fat, middle-aged woman. She looked us up and down in utter disgust.

‘Come for the little kids this time, have yer?' she bawled at Carrick.

‘No, I'd like to talk to you about the turf war we've had in the city.'

Her eyes screwed up in amazement. ‘And what the bloody 'ell d'you reckon I know about that?'

‘Your sons Ricky and Riley seem to know something about it.'

I busied myself taking a notebook and pen from my bag, not looking in Carrick's direction. He had said nothing about this to me. Was it true? I had an idea it was not.

‘My sons are too clever to get involved in anything like that,' the woman protested.

No, sorry ducky, too stupid.

‘I'd like you to give me the names of their friends.'

Slowly, she shook her head. ‘I don't know who their friends are.'

‘Did they knock around with Adam Trelonic?'

‘Him! The one what got done in? I should say not! He owed my husband a packet of money. Sold a car for him and kept all the dosh.'

‘A stolen car?' Carrick asked silkily.

The ensuing silence was broken by a baby starting to cry somewhere within.

‘May we come in?' Carrick asked.

‘No, I'm busy.'

‘I can get another warrant and search the place again.'

‘Look, we don't get involved with the big gangs and have guns and stuff like that. You know we don't. Go away and stop pesterin' me. You've got all the blokes in custody for one daft reason or another so why the 'ell don't you ask
them
?' She began to close the door.