by Adam Croft
The level of autonomy Culverhouse and his team were given was something they didn’t take for granted, but certainly made the most of.
The atmosphere was generally far more relaxed than in most major incident teams, although the pressure tended to be far greater. The whole team was acutely aware that they were only in existence because of their success rate. One slip-up — one failed case — and it’d give the force’s superiors the perfect reason to close down Mildenheath CID and subsume everything into county headquarters at Milton House.
It was almost completely unheard of for the same team to stick together from case to case, but Mildenheath’s core major incident team had remained almost untouched for a number of years.
There was no conventional organisation chart, but Detective Sergeant Wendy Knight was almost universally considered to be Culverhouse’s right-hand woman. This was largely due to the fact that she was the only member of the team with enough ambition to step up to the plate.
The ageing Detective Sergeant Frank Vine was eyeing retirement rather than a promotion, and DS Steve Wing had found his comfort point at Sergeant: enough money to live on, and enough responsibility to live without.
Detective Constable Debbie Weston had never had a desire to become a sergeant, despite being told many times over the years that she should. She was happy seeing out her work years doing the menial tasks, flying under the radar and often providing the technical breakthrough which led to the identification of a killer. She had, though, been taking a leave of extended absence to look after her mother, who was on her last — apparently very long — legs down on the south coast.
The team’s newest recruit, DC Ryan Mackenzie, had thrown Culverhouse into something of a tailspin. Although the DCI had expected the anonymous new recruit to be a young man he could mold into a protégé of his very own, he’d been a little disappointed to discover Ryan Mackenzie was a young lesbian and vegan with strong ideas and morals — many of which were opposed to his own.
The desire for a protégé had been strong in Culverhouse. He’d taken that role himself on joining Mildenheath CID all those years ago, working under the legendary Jack Taylor. The closest he’d come to forming an officer in his own mould was a young officer called Luke Baxter, who had been tragically taken from them in a showdown with the Mildenheath Ripper four years earlier.
Jack Culverhouse knew he didn’t have many years left in his role. He’d either get fed up and chuck in the towel, be shuffled into a back office or pensioned off in a ‘reorganisation scheme’ or drop dead at his desk one day. His blood pressure had been through the roof for years, and the job had taken a heavy toll on his private life.
Retirement was never really going to be an option for him, though. The force was too severely understaffed for them to get rid of him voluntarily, and if fossils like Frank Vine were able to carry on working with one foot in the grave he was sure he still had a few years left in him yet.
‘I presume you’ve all read the documentation on the three armed robberies in and around Mildenheath last night,’ he said, knowing full well that one or two of them wouldn’t have. Despite — or perhaps because of — this, he moved swiftly on. ‘So, a quick update on where everyone is and which jobs have been assigned to everyone. Ryan’s going through the list of current and ex-employees, cross-referencing that with the PNC to see if any of them have form. Steve and Frank are going through CCTV from the surrounding area to see if we can track the movements of the BMW before and after the incidents. I’ll be overseeing the investigation as your Emperor and Overlord, as well as speaking to anyone of interest. Detective Sergeant Knight will be accompanying me on those trips and in the meantime will make me copious amounts of black coffee. Any questions on any of that?’
‘Yeah, one lump or two?’ Steve Wing joked.
‘If you’re talking about you and Frank, two. Now, we’ve already got statements from Trinity Lloyd, the girl who was on duty at the Whitecliff Road forecourt and Ian Gumbert, who owns all three branches. Statements from both of them show that security on the forecourts was lax, to say the least. Gumbert seemed not to give a shit until I pointed out that we couldn’t just click our fingers and put the perpetrators in jail. Now he’s experiencing what a more eloquent person might call a brown trouser moment. The only cameras on his forecourts are dummies. There are no panic alarms. The week’s takings were kept in a box under the counter. All in all, it’s an absolute fucking shitshow but unfortunately we’re contractually obliged to try and do our best for him. As luck would have it, he poked and prodded his deluded little brain and came up with something which might help us.’
He gestured towards Wendy, who stood up and pointed to the image of a young man, which was pinned to the board behind Jack.
‘This is Damian King. He spent time at Her Majesty’s pleasure after being found guilty of a double assault when he kicked the living daylights out of two guys in a local nightclub. Apparently, he was convinced they were both leering over his girlfriend. Turns out not only was he wrong, he was very wrong. The two men were a gay couple enjoying a night out together and were definitely not interested in King’s girlfriend in any way, shape or form. Regardless, one of the men had to have a steel plate inserted into his jaw and the other has had occasional epileptic seizures since the incident.’
‘Nice bloke,’ Ryan said.
‘Nice enough for Ian Gumbert to give him the opportunity to get back on his feet with a job at one of his petrol stations, anyway,’ Wendy replied.
Jack snorted. ‘According to Gumbert, he’s no Good Samaritan — as if we didn’t already know that. Apparently Damian King is the son of an old family friend, Marsha King. Marsha leant on Gumbert and asked him to take a chance on her boy because he’d made a huge mistake and was dreadfully sorry. As if we haven’t heard that one before.’
Wendy jumped in to continue the story. ‘Unfortunately, Damian King wasn’t the reformed character his mum made him out to be. Gumbert caught him with his hand in the till. Almost literally. He’d suspected him of being on the take, so came in before his shift one day and wrote Damian is a tea leaf on all the notes with an ultraviolet pen. He came back at the end of the shift and asked him to empty out his pockets. He had eighty quid in marked notes. He claimed he’d exchanged them for some smaller notes, but on closer inspection Gumbert found the takings in the till were down. Funnily enough, by almost exactly eighty quid.’
‘How did he think he was gonna get away with that?’ Steve piped up. ‘I mean, most shops will expect their takings to be off by a few quid because of mistakes and stuff, but eighty quid?’
‘I think the problem is he didn’t think,’ Wendy replied. ‘He had his eye on the goal and didn’t think it through, clearly. Same as he didn’t think it through before kicking those guys’ heads in.’
‘Let’s not forget he’s shown himself to be a retaliator, too. Look what he did to those gay blokes,’ Culverhouse said, eliciting a wince from a couple of members of the team. ‘If he thinks someone’s wronged him in some way, he reacts. Badly. Now, we need to bear in mind he’s not gone out and done these robberies himself on his pushbike. This was an organised gang. They knew what they were doing. They were armed. We need to probe links, see who King’s in contact with. He’s shit at covering his tracks, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there were text messages or some sort of evidence of communication we could find. If it’s him, it’ll be there.’
‘Reasonable grounds for arrest?’ Steve piped up.
‘Not yet. We need something more. But I’ll go round and see if he’s up for a voluntary interview. See what we can get. DS Knight, you’re coming with me.’
7
Jack and Wendy knew from his pictures on the Police National Computer that Damian King was a distinctive-looking guy. He was tall, stooped slightly from the shoulders and hook nose that reminded them of a plague doctor from medieval times.
At first glance, he didn’t look like the sort of man who’d be able to swing a punch, ne
ver mind put two people in hospital. They knew he had, though, so there was no telling what else he was capable of.
He still lived at home, although not in one of the roughest areas of town. It turned out that Damian King wasn’t another product of the failed system or the never-ending cycle of poverty, crime and disillusionment, but had actually come from a pretty normal family in a pretty normal area of Mildenheath.
They recognised him as soon as he opened the door.
‘Damian King? Detective Chief Inspector Jack Culverhouse. This is Detective Sergeant Wendy Knight. Can we come in?’
The usual practice would be to have let King know he had nothing to worry about. There were numerous stories within the police service about officers who’d had someone open the door to them and immediately faint or freak out, thinking they were there to tell them one of their loved ones had been found dead. But, as far as Jack was concerned, he was in no mood to make Damian King feel at ease.
‘Why, what’s it about?’ King asked.
‘We’d rather talk inside if that’s alright with you.’
‘Are you arresting me?’
‘No, we just want to talk to you.’
‘Well you can piss off then. I ain’t talking to you.’ With that, King went to push the door shut. Jack put his foot in the way.
‘I’m more than happy to arrest you if you like. I can authorise a full search of your house and your body. If you’re extra lucky, I’ll even ask them to wear gloves. Or you can just let us in and offer us a cup of tea. Entirely up to you.’
King looked at them for a moment, surveying them as if they were travelling salesmen, then stood back and watched them walk into his house.
‘Mum not in?’ Jack asked.
‘She’s at work. And I know you ain’t got shit, so don’t go threatening me again, alright?’
‘I don’t do threats, Damian. I do promises.’
‘Bullshit. If you think you’ve got enough to search my house, you’ve got enough to arrest me. But you didn’t, innit. Cos you’ve got nothing.’
‘Nothing on what?’ Jack asked.
‘You tell me.’
‘Alright. Get that kettle on and I will.’
King did as he was told.
‘So,’ Jack said, sitting at the kitchen table. ‘How’s work?’
‘Not doing much at the moment. Had a few bits going on.’
‘You were working at the petrol station weren’t you?’ he asked, watching King’s eyes carefully.
‘I was. For a bit.’ His body language and demeanour gave nothing away, but that didn’t surprise Jack. Some people managed to train themselves to not incriminate themselves. He doubted King was one of those, though he didn’t seem entirely surprised to discover that they’d done their research on him.
‘What happened?’
‘I left.’
‘Yeah, I got that. Were you sacked or did you resign?’
‘I was asked to resign. So both. Neither. Whatever.’
‘What for?’
King sighed. ‘You know what for. Why do you lot always have to do this stupid dance where you ask me things you already know the answer to?’
‘Because that’s how it works. We need to hear your side of things.’
‘I don’t lie. And anyway, that fat prick said he weren’t gonna tell the police.’
‘Which fat prick is this?’ Wendy asked, as if the words weren’t even an insult.
‘Ian. The bloke who owns the petrol station. He told me he wouldn’t get the police involved, ‘cos of my record and that.’
Jack looked at Wendy for a moment before speaking to King. ‘This isn’t about you nicking money from the till, Damian. At least not that particular incident, anyway. Where were you last night?’
‘Here. At home.’
‘All night?’
‘From about half seven, yeah. I’ve got this bloody tag on, ain’t I?’ he said, lifting the leg of his jogging bottoms to reveal an ankle tag. ‘Can’t go anywhere between nine at night and six in the morning.’ That was something that hadn’t been apparent from their brief background checks into King, but which could provide valuable evidence.
‘So that thing will show us you were at home all night last night?’
‘It’ll show you everywhere I’ve been, innit. It tracks everything.’
Except phone calls and encrypted text messages, Wendy thought, sure that any plans to organise an armed robbery would’ve been done much more secretly than King rocking up at his associates’ houses.
Jack waited until he had a good view of King’s face before landing the next question out of nowhere.
‘Did you know all three of Ian Gumbert’s petrol stations were robbed last night?’
‘No,’ King replied, without showing much emotion.
‘Five blokes rocked up in a BMW with shotguns, which they pointed in the faces of the cashiers. One of them was a young college girl.’ Jack had deliberately mentioned five robbers rather than three, to see if King questioned or corrected this later. If he did, he’d know he was lying.
‘Jesus. She alright?’
‘Physically. She’ll be offered support.’
‘Well I don’t know what you want me to do, but I hope you catch them.’
‘Do you?’ Jack asked.
King locked eyes with him. ‘Yeah. It’s not right doing that to people.’
‘Even to people like Ian Gumbert? A man you swore revenge against?’
King’s face dropped slowly, before breaking into a smile as he nodded his head slowly. ‘Alright. I see what this is all about. You reckon I did it, don’t you? Asking about the petrol station, about my tag, trying to shit me up by saying about the girl what got a gun in her face. Alright. Yeah, alright. I’m saying nothing until you arrest me and get me a solicitor. Til then, you can fuck off, alright?’
‘Shall I write that word for word in my notes?’
‘Write what you like, cunt.’
‘I probably won’t write that, if I’m honest. Plays havoc with the spellcheck.’
Wendy interjected. ‘It really would be better if you spoke to us and answered our questions, Damian. We’re not here to try and catch you out. We just want to try to find the people responsible. The people who pointed a gun in that young girl’s face.’
‘Can’t blame me for that,’ King said.
‘We’re not trying to. Look at it from our point of view. We’ve got to follow any leads we have and speak to anyone who might possibly crop up as a person of interest. And, you’ve got to be honest with yourself, you’re going to be one of them.’
‘What, because I used to work there?’ By now, King was starting to become visibly angry. Culverhouse jumped on the opportunity.
‘No, because you’ve got previous for kicking two blokes’ heads in and got the sack from the same petrol station for nicking money out the till. Now, you might be completely innocent and yes, maybe you were sitting at home watching Four Weddings and a Funeral, but it doesn’t look great, does it?’
King looked at him for a moment. ‘Nah. You’re right. I don’t like Hugh Grant either.’
Jack had to admit to himself that he got a little thrill when someone played him back at his own style. He liked the chase, the battle of wits and the banter he was able to get going with somebody — just before slapping a pair of cuffs on them and chucking them in a cell. But he knew that wasn’t going to be an option with Damian King. Not today, anyway.
‘Would you really rather we did this with search warrants, Damian?’ Jack asked.
King looked at him and smiled.
‘Bring it on.’
8
Jack Culverhouse slammed his car door a little harder than usual, before letting out a large sigh.
‘Well I thought that went alright,’ Wendy said, knowing exactly which buttons to push to wind her colleague up.
‘Fuck off,’ Culverhouse said quietly.
‘If it’s him, something’ll crop up. Like you said, he’s sho
wed he’s pretty hopeless when it comes to thinking ahead and covering his tracks.’
‘It’s the time factor, though. If he’s involved he knows we’ll be back, and now he’s got the chance to start hiding stuff. We’ve given him a head start.’
It wasn’t often Wendy felt sorry for Jack, but she was starting to feel his pain and frustration.
‘He might not be involved in any way. In which case it’s a good job we didn’t arrest him. And if he is involved, we’ll find something.’
Culverhouse shook his head. ‘I’ve been doing this job long enough to know when someone’s hiding something. And that shit with the ankle tag? It’s bollocks. Do you know how easy those things are to get off? It’s a joke. They’re practically voluntary.’
‘I think they’re better now than they used to be. If he’d been out robbing petrol stations last night, we’d know about it.’
‘He doesn’t need to have even left the house. That’s the beautiful thing. Do I think he was in the car or carrying the gun? Not a chance. He’ll have set someone up to do the legwork. My money says he met someone while he was in prison and he’s kept in touch, tipped them off and offered them a big share of the takings in exchange. I mean, come on — maybe he even told them they could keep the lot. His kick comes from doing Gumbert over. Surely even Damian King’s not stupid enough to walk around with thousands of pounds in stolen notes in his pocket.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Wendy said. ‘He’s already done just that with eighty quid. And let’s be fair — that’s a pretty ambitious take from a till. Difficult to explain that away. I can’t imagine him not wanting a piece of forty-five grand.’
Culverhouse chuckled slightly. ‘See. I knew you thought he was involved.’
‘No, I’m just saying that if he is I don’t think the ankle tag can really be used as evidence. We’ll need to do cell site analysis on his mobile. See if that left his house last night, or if it’s gone walkabout without his ankle tag at any point. It’s easy enough to go out and forget your mobile, but it’s a bit more difficult to accidentally leave your ankle at home.’
