Wrongful Death (2 page)

‘So every murder team across London is going to get equipment like this?’ Barbara asked.

‘Eventually. This however is your new working home and you will be permanently based here.’

‘I live in Harlow. It will be a three-hour round trip every day and if they stop our free rail travel the cost will be astronomical,’ Barbara blurted angrily but Langton ignored her.

‘You’re probably all wondering what your new case is,’ he said as he opened his briefcase, removed a file and placed it on the table.

Anna was slightly irritated that he hadn’t discussed the details with her before informing the team, but she let it go for now.

Langton touched the large plasma screen and a picture came up of a handsome light-skinned, mixed-race man. Langton informed the team that their victim Joshua Reynolds had been age thirty-one, and married to Donna Reynolds, now twenty-seven, and he had died just over six months ago from a single gunshot wound to the head. At the time of his death, Reynolds was co-owner of a club called the Trojan.

As Langton spoke, Anna whispered to Joan to run Reynolds’ name on the major investigation database. Quietly, Joan typed in the victim’s details but could find no sign of anyone by that name having been the subject of a murder investigation.

‘Excuse me, sir, but there doesn’t appear to be a computer record concerning the murder of Reynolds,’ Anna said.

If Langton was annoyed by the interruption he didn’t show it. ‘That, DCI Travis, is because he was believed to have committed suicide and the inquiry was dealt with on Borough by the local detective inspector. It has since been alleged that he may have been murdered and I have decided that the allegation will be properly investigated. Treat it like you would a cold case.’ He held up the thin case file.

‘There is not much contained here other than scene photographs, copy of a suicide note found on his laptop, a statement from his wife who discovered the body, pathology and closing report by DI Paul Simms.’

Anna knew Paul Simms well; he was an openly gay officer whom she had previously worked with on the Alan Rawlins murder. She had found him to be a dedicated and competent officer and doubted he would have made mistakes or come to the wrong conclusions in this case.

‘Has the Coroner’s inquest hearing been held?’ Anna asked.

‘Yes, just over a month ago . . .’

‘And the verdict was?’ Anna enquired.

‘Suicide,’ Langton replied.

‘And the new evidence that has come to light is . . .?’

‘I was about to inform you all so if you would kindly let me finish, DCI Travis.’

Langton then brought up a mug shot of a black male that bore the caption: Delon Taylor, age twenty-eight years.

‘Taylor is currently in custody at Belmarsh Prison awaiting trial for armed robbery and serious assault on a police officer. He has told one of his guards that he has information that Joshua Reynolds was murdered. And before you ask, Travis, Taylor’s allegation was only made last week and he refuses to say any more until he speaks to a murder squad detective. It may well be a totally unfounded allegation.’

‘Is Taylor going to be pleading guilty?’ Barolli asked.

‘It would appear so, yes,’ Langton replied, becoming irritated with the obvious lack of enthusiasm from the team.

‘So he could be making it up. Looking for a way to get a reduced sentence?’ Anna remarked, to nods of agreement from around the room.

‘There’s no deal on the table. If it’s lies then he gets nothing and will be prosecuted for wasting police time,’ Langton snapped.

‘Will you be overseeing the inquiry personally, sir?’ Joan asked.

‘No, and as yet I haven’t decided who will be.’

Anna was somewhat confused, as the case didn’t really seem to merit Langton’s involvement, but now he was in effect stating that he had no interest in it himself. Then he gave his reason. Smiling, he gestured to everyone and said that he would not be overseeing the inquiry because he had been given a rare opportunity to be seconded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States for a year. He was to work at the Quantico Academy, specializing in the study of serial killers, alongside some of the most highly regarded and experienced agents who had made their careers creating offender profiles. His enthusiasm was obvious as he revealed he would also be working on unsolved cases at Quantico.

Anna couldn’t help but smile – sometimes he was so childlike, beaming from ear to ear, unable to disguise his pleasure at what this invaluable opportunity meant to him. Everyone was congratulating him, but Anna was also slightly disappointed. It was almost as if he was retiring from the Met and although he expressed his eagerness to go, it didn’t feel right.

Langton had always been an old-school detective, often politically incorrect, abrupt and averse to new policies or procedures. Obstinate he could be, yet he had a suppleness about him, not only in the way he bent the rules, but also in how he treated his colleagues. There was one thing no one could or would ever deny and that was that James Langton got results.

Anna knew that he had ruffled a few high-ranking feathers along the way. Most notably, since his promotion to chief superintendent, those of Deputy Commissioner Walters over the case of Anthony Fitzpatrick, a notorious drug dealer and murderer, or ‘the one that got away’, as Langton referred to him. More recently, there was the shooting of Paul Barolli during the escape from custody of the serial killer Henry Oates. Walters had been appointed to investigate Langton’s alleged breaches of discipline in both cases.

Walters had really given Anna a grilling to establish exactly what had occurred in the Fitzpatrick case. Langton had warned her to keep her mouth shut about the mishandling of evidence that would have led to the capture of the highly elusive drug dealer. Anna knew she had been at fault and Langton had warned her at the time that it was a possible career-ending fiasco, but assured her that he would resolve the entire screw-up. Initially, it had appeared that he was as good as his word as Walters accepted Langton’s version of events. However, a year later the Deputy Commissioner called in Anna just as she was being fast-tracked for promotion, for what he misleadingly called an ‘off the record’ meeting, in which he duped her into believing he already had all the details regarding the Fitzpatrick mess. The truth was that the notorious drug dealer had had the audacity to walk into the team’s incident room posing as an FBI agent, thereby gaining information about where his stolen drugs were hidden. He committed three murders and then to top it all evaded arrest by flying off in his own plane with his haul of drugs, worth millions, and his young son on board.

For Anna, Fitzpatrick’s escape had been an unforgettable moment. She had witnessed at first hand Langton’s fury, which escalated further when she admitted that she had actually seen a photograph of the plane at a country cottage owned by the dealer’s brother and had failed to connect it to their suspect.

Although Anna had inadvertently let it slip to Walters that mistakes were made during the Fitzpatrick investigation, she never confessed her own concerning the plane, or revealed that Langton was present in the murder squad office when Fitzpatrick had posed as an FBI agent. She had always felt somewhat relieved that the Deputy Commissioner never reopened the case against Langton. She could only surmise that Walters still felt there was not enough evidence for disciplinary action.

Similarly in the Oates case, Langton had ensured that everyone on the team was ‘singing off the same hymn sheet’. When interviewed by Walters, they all stuck to the story that the sudden atrocious turn in the weather could not have been foreseen and had led directly to Oates’s opportunity to escape. Langton actually told Walters he saw it as ‘an indiscriminate act of God’ and played on the fact that the suspect was quickly rearrested and had confessed to a number of murders. Anna knew deep down that Walters was Langton’s nemesis and the real reason behind his failure to make Commander. However, Langton’s promotion was a subject she had decided to never again raise in his presence for fear he would discover she’d unwittingly betrayed him to the Deputy Commissioner. That would be something he could never forgive.

Many cherished moments had passed between Anna and Langton and they had both known their own tragedies; Langton with the sudden death of his first wife, and Anna herself when a prison inmate murdered her beloved fiancé, Ken. She had fought to salvage her career, and had even worked alongside Langton since the Fitzpatrick case, but he had never been as friendly or as close to her – in fact the reverse. He appeared to be watching her progress as she rose quickly through the ranks, as if loath to ever again become emotionally involved.

Anna had not worked with Langton since the Oates inquiry. She had no current personal relationship or could even contemplate one. Work had become her priority and her whole life, and she had managed to earn the respect of all her colleagues. However, this new case Langton had given them just didn’t sit right with her. To reopen a suicide as a cold case, because of a spurious allegation from an untrustworthy source like Delon Taylor, was highly irregular. Anna knew Langton better than anyone and was suspicious that there was a hidden agenda to his allocating an apparently simple case of suicide to a highly experienced murder team. She wondered if Langton had some personal connection. If that was the case, as the DCI she needed to know before he left the office.

‘Could have a quick word with you?’ she asked him.

‘As it happens there a couple of matters that I need to speak to you about,’ Langton said as he removed his jacket from the chair.

‘We can use my office then,’ Anna said, starting to head that way.

‘I’ve got to go to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square for a meeting at their FBI office. I will be back about four p.m. and we can talk then. In the meantime, you can get cracking uploading the Reynolds case onto the computers, he threw at her as he turned away.

‘Well that should take up about ten minutes of our time,’ Anna retorted, irritated.

‘That’s a nice glowing tan you’ve got, hides the red face when you’re annoyed with me.’

Langton was quickly out the door, leaving Anna even more convinced he was hiding something from her.

Chapter Two

Deciding that she might as well make good use of her time until Langton returned, Anna picked up the file Paul Simms had prepared on Joshua Reynolds’ death. Although the contents were sparse, it seemed to her the verdict of suicide was correct. She knew that if the Coroner had any doubts he would have given an open verdict or requested a more in-depth police inquiry.

Anna spread out the scene photographs across her desk. Reynolds was lying beside the sofa on his right side with his right arm outstretched in front of him, the revolver still in his hand. His knees were in an almost foetal position and on the left temple there was a bullet exit wound. There was a very large pool of blood around Reynolds’ head and upper torso, which his white shirt had soaked up like blotting paper. Blood spatter, along with brain and skull tissue, was distributed on the seat and upright cushions of the sofa. Amongst the postmortem photographs, one showed a bullet entry wound to the right temple. The wound had many pinprick-sized black burns around it, indicating a close-range shot. The exit wound, the pathologist’s report remarked, indicated the gun being held by the victim at a slight upward angle. The forensic swabs taken from Reynolds’ right hand revealed heavy traces of firearms residue and were consistent with him pulling the trigger. The wall safe in the bedroom fitted wardrobe was open and contained four loose bullets, which were the same kind as the single empty cartridge case in the gun. Firearms residue matching that on the gun and Reynolds’ body was found in the safe, indicating it had been kept there. His blood alcohol level was high, indicating he was drunk at the time he shot himself. The pathologist’s report concluded death by injuries to the head from a gunshot wound. From the state of rigor mortis the pathologist estimated the body had been dead between eight to twenty hours prior to its discovery at midday on the sixth of November.

Anna didn’t have the enthusiasm to read through what little else there was in the case file, as the pathology and forensic reports spoke for themselves. Like the rest of the team she was finding it hard to work up any interest and she was deeply annoyed that Langton, for reasons she was unable to fathom, had lumbered her with such an open-and-shut case of suicide. There was a knock at her door and Paul Barolli entered.

‘We’ve finally got all the computers set up and linked, so if I can take a copy of the file we can get the contents uploaded.’

‘By all means take a copy for yourself and a couple for the office but hold off on the upload for now,’ Anna told him.

‘I thought DCS Langton wanted it treated as a cold case investigation and put on the computer system.’

‘I know what he said, Paul, but honestly, read the file and tell me if there’s something I’m missing. Reynolds even left a suicide note on his laptop.’

‘Why has Langton given us this case then?’

‘I haven’t a bloody clue. The sooner we interview Delon Taylor the quicker we can be freed up for a proper murder investigation. You and I will pay him a visit in Belmarsh.’

‘You want me to go with you?’

‘Well you are my number two now.’

‘You think Taylor is lying?’

‘We won’t know until we speak to him.’

Anna handed Paul the file and followed him back into the main office.

‘Right, listen up,’ she said, attempting to hide her own frustration. ‘I know you are all feeling a bit down-hearted, what with all this wonderful new technical equipment and no case to play with. DI Barolli and I will see Delon Taylor tomorrow and hopefully by the next day we will be free to take a live case. I know you all kindly came in at seven a.m. this morning to set up the office, and it’s nearly three p.m. and—’

‘Don’t tell us there’s no overtime, ma’am!’ the voice of Detective Dan Ross shouted jovially from the back of the room, resulting in a chorus of laughter from the team.