DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2

by Phillip Strang

  ‘They recognised raw talent.’

  ‘Gareth Rees in the military; Peter Hood for the GBH. However, his time in prison was short, and soon after release, he was in uniform.’

  ‘As I said, raw talent.’

  ‘The army wouldn’t necessarily take a man with a criminal record,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Ordinarily, they wouldn’t,’ Larry agreed. ‘But in extreme circumstances, who knows. A naturally-talented and unemotional man might have suited them fine.’

  ‘Gabbi Gaffney told me he was not psychopathic, and that he had treated her with a degree of respect,’ Wendy said.

  ‘With the right triggers, he could have been.’ Isaac said. ‘Behind enemy lines, an assassination, the possibility of collateral damage, innocent people to die in the attempt to get close into the target. It would take a special kind of person, the sort of person who could kill women.’

  ‘The sort of person who could kill a couple of teenagers,’ Wendy said.

  ‘This trigger? How would it be switched on and off?’ Bridget asked.

  ‘We don’t know. All I know is, we need Rees or whatever he calls himself,’ Isaac said.

  ***

  Larry made contact with Spanish John, gave him the other name that Gareth Rees had used in the past. Wendy phoned Meredith Temple, told her to make herself scarce for a couple of days, an unknown address, and not to answer her phone unless she was sure of the caller. She also phoned both the Robinsons and Winstons, and told them to take Brad and Rose out of school, and to keep them at home, and that a police presence would be at both houses.

  Questions came from all parties contacted; the answer given by Larry and Wendy that the pressure was building up, and persons unknown and known were likely to react irrationally. It wasn’t a good explanation, but it was the best they could give.

  An APB was issued to all police forces throughout London and England, along with a clear photo. Gareth Rees, also known as Peter Hood, was to be regarded as extremely dangerous. No one was to approach unless armed, and they were to report back to Homicide at Challis Street Police Station.

  Ian Naughton still remained the greatest mystery. With the other two that Homicide were looking for, there was, at least, some knowledge. And as to the grave at Kensal Green, a murder site and a cryptic clue to another grave, and Naughton’s house in Holland Park – a complete blank.

  Three steps forward, two back, Isaac thought. He had the added burden of the sale of his flat and the purchase of a house, as well as Jenny looking to him to go with her to the gynaecologist occasionally. So far, he’d managed it once, and now with the investigation in its closing stages, he couldn’t afford to spare his wife the time. It was what he loved about her, the ability to understand, but she didn’t like it and they had argued the night before as to how finding a murderer took precedence over his child.

  ***

  Bill Ross phoned Larry, told him to get over to Canning Town within the hour. It was the last place that Larry wanted to be, but he complied. The information had been clear.

  ‘It’s Sean Garvey,’ Ross said.

  On the street outside the block of flats where Garvey had lived, a tent had been erected in the middle of the road, traffic banking up in each direction, the uniforms doing their best to direct the traffic up side streets; not so easy, Larry knew, as New Barn Street was a major thoroughfare, and it was the middle of the day.

  Ross was standing on the side of the road, the father of the dead youth with him. The father was in tears; Larry assumed it was the usual ‘he was a good boy’, ‘never forgot my birthday’. Always, he knew, after the event, the parents who had failed the child remembered the good, omitting the bad.

  ‘Shot,’ Bill Ross said as he excused himself from the father.

  ‘A gang?’

  ‘Not likely. A shot from the other side of the road. We’re checking CCTV cameras, but there aren’t many around here.’

  ‘Professional?’

  ‘The gangs are more into knives, although they’re keener on guns than they used to be, but this was daylight, no more than fifty minutes ago. No self-respecting hoodie would contemplate causing trouble in the early morning; they’re strictly night time.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘The father said he was looking out of the window, saw his son fall to the ground. He couldn’t have seen the shooter. What the crime scene team have ascertained, a car was parked on one of the side streets, twenty yards back. There’s a fire escape up the side of a building there, a metal structure, the ideal place for a marksman, a clear view of Garvey’s flat and the road. The man could have been waiting there for Garvey to come out, or he could have phoned him.’

  ‘The number?’

  ‘Who knows? Slip one of Conroy’s gang some money, and they’ll tell you anything.’

  ‘We’ve got an all-points out on Gareth Rees.’

  ‘If it’s him, it means he’s frightened, making sure that anyone who can connect him to the murders is eliminated.’

  ‘Garvey knew nothing,’ Larry said.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t, but this Rees character doesn’t know that. He’s trapped, lashing out, trying to protect himself.’

  ‘Which means others closer in to the murders are under threat.’

  Larry took out his phone and called Isaac, conferencing in Wendy. ‘It’s not a random death; this has been well-executed. And if it’s Rees, we’re trying to confirm that, then the man’s clearly deranged. We need the chief superintendent to authorise protective custody for the Robinsons, the Winstons, and for Meredith Temple. We’re dealing with a mad man, a man who knows how to kill.’

  ‘Consider his approval given,’ Isaac said. ‘If it’s Rees, see if you can find out the car he was driving, and then Bridget can work her magic.’

  Wendy left the office immediately, her first port of call, the Robinson household. As much as Tim Winston disapproved of Brad Robinson and his mother, as suspicious as Wendy was of the man, the two families would need to be in the one location, and unless anyone objected, not that she intended to let them, they were all to move in at the Winstons’. A patrol car was already on its way to the Winstons’; another was around the corner from the Robinsons’. It wasn’t sufficient protection for either of the families.

  Meredith Temple had been phoned, but she had lectures to attend, and regardless of Wendy’s protestations, study took preference, although the woman promised to be careful.

  At the crime scene, possible witnesses were being interviewed. A video copy from a camera at the corner of New Barn Street and the A13 up to Dagenham was with the CCTV officers at Canning Town, and with Bridget, who before joining Homicide had been a CCTV officer.

  A uniform came over to where Bill Ross and Larry were standing; at her side a young woman in her twenties, a small child in a pushchair.

  ‘I was taking a picture of her,’ the young woman said, her accent thick and Slavic; she stroked the child on the head as she spoke.

  ‘In the background,’ the female uniform said. ‘A man on the fire escape.’ She handed the phone over to Larry, who enlarged the picture as best he could. It was blurry, but it was a good likeness of Gareth Rees.’

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Ross said.

  ‘I reckon it’s him. I’ll forward the photo on to Bridget, see if she can enhance the image.’

  ‘It makes no sense. Why would he still be around? Why kill people on the off-chance?’

  ‘We’ll know when he’s in custody.’

  ‘Can I keep the phone?’ Larry said to the mother. ‘It’s evidence.’

  ‘I saw the car,’ the reply.

  ‘A photo?’

  Larry couldn’t believe that twice lucky with the same witness was possible.

  ‘It’s in the photo.’

  Larry looked at the picture again, realised that there was a car, blue in colour, almost certainly a small Toyota.

  ‘The registration number on the plate?’

  ‘I didn’t see it. Should
I have?’

  ‘No, not at all. It’s just that we’ve been looking for this man for some time. We regard him as dangerous.’

  Larry texted Bridget to focus on the car in the photo, to use whatever image-enhancing software was at her command.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Bill Ross asked the woman.

  ‘Here,’ pointing to the same building that Garvey had lived in. The two police officers understood that not everyone in the building was a criminal or lazy or uneducated. The young woman and her child were well-dressed, very presentable, and no doubt honourable and decent. Larry felt sorry for them that circumstances, the need for a better life than where they had come from, had condemned them to purgatory, although he was sure that in time the woman and her husband would earn their way out of there by hard work and a positive attitude.

  ***

  The net was closing on Gareth Rees, now generally regarded as verging on the psychopathic. It was considered by the team in Homicide and on advice from a psychologist that Rees needed to be handled with a great deal of care. Pressure had been applied by Chief Superintendent Goddard to the military to obtain a transcript of Rees’s court-martial and information about his state of mind, but he had had no luck.

  A logical mind would have distanced himself from London, and Rees was clearly intelligent and organised, as he had managed to alternate between two names with apparent impunity. There were even two British passports in his name, and if he had left the country, hidden away in a backwater somewhere in the world, then he could have remained at liberty indefinitely.

  Bridget had taken the photo from the young woman’s phone in Canning Town, enhanced it, proven that Gareth Rees had been on the fire escape and he had at his side a bag, the approximate size of a rifle with telescopic sights, as Sean Garvey had received one bullet to the head, dead before he hit the ground.

  The All-Points had been updated with a registration number, more good work from Bridget, and the make of car, a Toyota as believed, as well as its year of manufacture and colour.

  Surveillance cameras were scanning for the vehicle, as were cameras in each and every patrol car. It was an automatic sequence; it was bound to give a result, if the car was still visible, its progress after it left Canning Town, and if within the concentration of cameras in the city, a reasonably accurate detail of the location where it had been last seen, good enough for more concentrated enquiries, out on foot and walking the area.

  The team knew that Gareth Rees was coming to them; there were just too many factors against him now, although if he was to be taken, armed officers would be needed. Isaac phoned the head of the team that they had used at Naughton’s address in Holland Park, assured him that this time it was not a wild goose chase and that Rees was experienced, armed, a murderer, and a crack shot. This was not an amateur that they were dealing with.

  Chapter 27

  Gareth Rees sat in the interview room at Challis Street. His arrest had been without violence; the man had even been polite as he got out of his car after a patrol car had picked up the registration plate. Isaac had spoken to him briefly on his arrival and could see that he was as Gabbi Gaffney had described. He was well-dressed, an open-necked shirt, a jacket, a pair of grey trousers. He was tall, clearly fit for his age, known to be forty-four.

  So far, the man had not had a chance to give his side of the story, although he had been formally cautioned and told that he was in the police station on suspicion of murder. A lawyer of his choice was on the way to the station, and until the man arrived, the interview would not commence.

  At eleven-thirty in the morning, the imperious Jacob Jameson entered the station. He was known at Challis Street, a fair-minded man of searing intellect, a cultured accent, the child of affluent parents, and his manner in a courtroom and the eloquence of his speeches for the defence had meant that more than a few villains had walked free. Isaac was determined this was not to happen with Rees.

  Isaac went through the formalities in the interview room. Rees sat back on his chair, only sitting upright when stating his name. Jacob Jameson, resplendent in a pin-striped suit, sat firm, his arms folded, only unfolding them to read the case against his client, the murders so far, and the evidence, which, apart from the killing of Sean Garvey, was perilously weak.

  ‘My client reserves comment,’ Jameson said. ‘Apart from a blurry photo and Mr Rees being in the location of a shooting in Canning Town, and we will contend that he was there on legitimate business, your evidence is based on the circumstantial, and the frustration of the police in failing to find the murderer.’

  ‘Mr Rees,’ Isaac said, ‘you were in New Barn Street at the time Sean Garvey was shot.’

  ‘I was,’ Rees responded. ‘I saw a commotion, that’s why I left.’

  ‘And you were on a fire escape, with a clear view of the man?’

  ‘I’ll not deny it; no point, seeing you have the photo.’

  ‘Your purpose for being up there?’

  An interruption from Jameson. ‘My client was checking out a property for sale. The prices are depressed in the area, and he was taking the opportunity to evaluate a possible investment.’

  Isaac looked over at Larry as if to say, is this true?

  Outside the room, Wendy phoned Bridget, asked her to check.

  ‘You were carrying a bag?’ Isaac directed his question to Gareth Rees.

  ‘I was.’

  It seemed to Isaac and Larry that the forty-five minutes that Rees and his lawyer had spent together before the interview had been time well used. There was no doubt that Rees was Garvey’s murderer, but no one had seen the rifle, nor the shot being taken, and the weapon had not been found. Rees was innocent until proven guilty, and Chief Superintendent Goddard, who was listening in from the other room, realised that at this rate the man could still walk free.

  Bridget came back within five minutes to state that the building with the fire escape had been up for sale four weeks previously, but had since been withdrawn from sale. Whether Rees knew this wasn’t important.

  The case against Rees was not cast-iron.

  Isaac, struggling to keep the interview going and in the police’s favour, tried a different tack.

  ‘Mr Rees, Godstone, a village to the south of London. Do you know it?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You rented a house there in the company of an Asian woman.’

  ‘I’ve driven through it, had a pint of beer in the pub, and as to this Asian woman, I only know of one, and she did a runner as soon as I got her permanent residency in England.’

  ‘Are you in contact with your former wife?’ Larry asked.

  ‘No, but I know where she is.’

  A veiled threat, Isaac wondered. Rees would have realised that it must have been Gabbi Gaffney who was the primary source of information for the police.

  ‘You are also known as Peter Hood.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A man is entitled to call himself what he wants.’

  ‘Your evidence?’ Jameson said. He said little, waited his time. Whether Gareth Rees was innocent of the crime that the police alleged was not his concern. His job was to give the best legal advice and expertise that money could buy, and Jameson wasn’t cheap, which meant that Rees or someone else had the money to pay him.

  ‘Do you know a Janice Robinson?’ Larry said.

  Isaac would have preferred that Larry hadn’t raised the woman’s name, not yet.

  ‘Canning Town, tell us about your time there?’ Isaac said, focussing back to the area.

  ‘I prefer to keep out of there as much as possible,’ Rees’s reply.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Have you been there? It’s not the best part of London, more like Baghdad than Britain.’

  ‘And you’ve been to Iraq?’

  ‘I have. I was a soldier, enough medals to wallpaper this room.’

  ‘You were a killer.’

  ‘I followed orders. That’s what they teach you,
and those who join the military hoping for an education and a cushy life are naïve. In the military, you kill or are killed, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘And you, Mr Rees, did you like it?’

  ‘Killing people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If ordered, I did my duty.’

  Jameson was looking over at his client, unsure where the questioning was heading. He leant over, whispered in his ear. ‘They’re baiting you.’

  Rees sat up straight again, rested his arms on the desk. ‘Someone had to do it, so you can all sleep safe in your beds at night. And, no, I didn’t enjoy it.’

  ‘Sometimes, innocent people were killed.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Is that why you were court-martialled?’

  ‘My client’s military record,’ Jameson interjected, ‘is not of relevance here. Whether he had a predilection for killing in a war or not is unimportant. A person is guilty of a crime as a result of proof, not supposition, a muted conscience for right and wrong, moral or amoral. If you are unable to provide further evidence, then it is for the police to terminate this interview and to allow my client to leave.’

  ‘Your client will be formally charged with the murder of Sean Garvey,’ Isaac said.

  ‘Without evidence?’ Jameson’s retort.

  ‘Our investigations are ongoing. Let me ask Mr Rees about his former wife. His understanding of what happened between him and her is contrary to what we’ve been told.’

  ‘They’re all the same. Find a lonely western man, wiggle their asses, get him excited. Once they’ve got what they want, then it’s a changed situation.’

  ‘Analyn?’

  ‘I don’t know the woman.’

  ‘She was at Mary Wilton’s brothel when you went to see your wife.’

  ‘If she was, I didn’t see her.’

  ‘You’re not disputing that you visited your wife at a brothel?’

  ‘Why should I? It’s what she was doing in the Philippines.’