Thornwyn
Page 20
“I know he’s friends with the production director, Jeremy Godfrey, but I don’t believe Jeremy would’ve spilled that kind of information to him.” He looked puzzled.
“Thornwyn knows Godfrey?” I was surprised at hearing this.
“Yeah, they play golf together. They’re members of the same golf club. Some place in Hertfordshire.”
I’d not considered the likelihood of Thornwyn and Jeremy Godfrey knowing each other. This was something else to think about.
“That’s how I first met Thornwyn, through Jeremy Godfrey,” Priestly said.
“Interesting,” I said, “but it wasn’t him, that’s not who I was thinking of. Someone else leaked that information to Thornwyn.”
His eyes opened wide. “Who?”
“You don’t need to know that.” I shook my head. I was thinking, could it have been Jeremy Godfrey leaking information to Thornwyn? What would have been his motive for doing this? Did Thornwyn have something on him as well?
Priestly placed both hands on the desk and looked at me. “So, that’s the story. What happens now?”
“I still have some other enquiries to pursue, but I’m officially cautioning you. You’re not to talk about this to anyone, got that? You’ll be taken in and charged soon. Anyone asks, I was here helping you update security procedures. Okay?”
He nodded. “I’ve cooperated fully with you. Will that count for anything?”
“That’s up to whoever charges you.” I hoped it counted for nothing.
Driving away, I was wondering what Priestly could have done whilst he was still working for Bartolome to make him fear Thornwyn disclosing the information he’d obtained. I made a note to ask Jeremy Godfrey when I went to pay him a return visit very soon. But first there was someone else to visit.
“Oh, fuck, what you want now?” he said as he opened the door to me. Brian Turley didn’t appear overly pleased to see me again. I walked past him without waiting to be invited in.
His abode looked even more bleak and depressing now Andy Harris was living in a flat which was almost habitable. The curtains being pulled half-closed gave the room an even more downcast feel, and the clutter everywhere gave the impression of someone indifferent to his environment.
Turley followed me in and closed the door. To my surprise there was no glass of vodka on the table. I couldn’t even see a bottle anywhere. He sat down in his usual place.
“I’m trying to cut down on my drinking,” he said. He’d obviously seen me looking around his flat and he’d guessed what I was noticing the absence of. “I’ve been told by my union rep the IPCC are gonna start questioning me next week, so I’m trying to get my head straight, trying to lengthen the times between having a drink. I ain’t strong enough to go cold turkey, so the longer I can go between drinks, the better.”
“Good for you, mate,” I said encouragingly. I meant it.
“I ain’t had a drink today yet.” He sounded proud. I looked at my watch. It was eleven twenty in the morning. “I’m trying to see if I can make it to dinner time without one.”
I nodded. “That’s good.”
When I’d first encountered Turley on joining Thornwyn’s squad, he had been a heavy drinker even then but had been able to function as an effective police officer. But within a year his effectiveness had gradually lessened as his drinking binges had become the stuff of squad legend. I remembered I’d once signed off on a report concerning a series of arrests made. The report was accurate in every detail, except for the part stating the arrests had been carried out by four detectives. Only I and two others had actually carried out the arrests. Turley had been too hungover to actively participate on an early morning series of arrests, so we’d covered up for him: a disciplinary offence and a possible suspension if it was ever made known, but this was the loyalty the team felt for each other. I didn’t want to think about Smitherman’s response if he ever discovered this.
“I was feeling quite positive till I saw you just now,” he said resignedly. “Why do I think you’ve got bad news for me?”
I perched on the arm of an armchair. Moving all the clothing and magazines strewn across the seat seemed too much effort. “I’ll come right to the point. You know someone named Noel Partias?”
“Don’t think so,” he said after a few moments’ thinking. “You sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Who is he?”
“Who is he? He’s the guy who took possession of the weapons you and Bernie the Buck stole from Byzantium. He was the go-between for your enterprising little gang and Khaled al-Ebouli, who was the recipient of the weapons.”
“Oh, was that his name? Bernie took the weapons back to his flat and gave them to this bloke, who was gonna sell them on to this Arab and then we’d get paid off. I never knew the name of the bloke who took them. Didn’t want to, either. All I knew about him was he was something in the Chackarti family, their weapons bloke or whatever.”
“Did you know he’s dead?”
“Bernie?”
“No, Partias. Found dead in Bernie’s flat last week,” I stated formally.
“Bernie killed him?”
I was looking intently at Turley’s eyes to see how he was reacting. “No, not Bernie. Police think someone else did.”
“How’d he die?”
“Hit his head on something, died from head injuries, lots of internal bleeding. He’d have probably survived if he’d been seen by the medics quicker. There was evidence suggesting he’d been in a fight beforehand, bruises on his forearms looking like he was trying to defend himself from being attacked. He’d also got contusions on his face, suggesting he’d been punched quite hard in the face at least twice. Don’t know what his assailant looked like.”
I was still staring at Turley as I spoke to check his reactions to what was being said. So far he didn’t appear to be unduly perturbed.
“Any suspects?” he asked. “Anyone spoke to Bernie about it?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t Bernie, but I’ve a pretty good suspect.”
“Who?” he asked innocently.
I paused for several seconds, keeping eye contact with Turley.
“Did you think you’d got away with it, Brian?” I smiled at him.
“What? You think I did the bastard over?”
I didn’t reply for a few moments. At last I nodded at him. “Here’s what I think happened. You told me you’d been looking for Bernie in the pub he uses. You couldn’t find him in the pub, so you went to his flat. He still wasn’t there, but Partias was, so you two get involved in a dispute about money. You told me Bernie owed you the money you were promised for the robbery. You’re both fired up, you argue and a fight starts, you smack Partias when he says he hasn’t got your money. You hit him a few times and then leave. I don’t think you meant to kill him, but he died from the head injuries he sustained hitting his head on or against something. Am I close to the truth?”
He slumped back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. He sat motionless for thirteen seconds, then looked up at me.
“Yeah, something like that,” he admitted. “He said he’d not got any money, then after we’d argued about where the money was for a minute or so, he said something like why would Thornwyn even want to work with the likes of me, how could he trust some drunken excuse for a policeman? That really pissed me off, that did. No fucking Scotsman talks to me like that, so I belted him one, a good one, put him on the deck.” He paused.
“And?”
“He got up, we struggled for a while, then I smacked him again, twice, and he went down. I kicked him in the balls twice whilst he was on the ground, asked him how’s that for a drunken copper, called him a Scottish wanker and told him I wanted my fucking money soon or he’d get the same again. Then I left.”
“So he was alive when you last saw him.”
“He was groaning and holding his nuts, so I suppose he was.”
“Well, he banged his head on something, ’cause that’s why he died.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head backwards.
“Fuck,” he sighed quietly. He looked down, nodding to himself for a few moments. “Anyone else know about this?”
“Police know he’s dead. It was me who found him.”
“You?”
“Yeah. I was looking for Bernie and went to his flat. Partias’d been dead about two weeks when I found his body. But what I’ve just told you, nobody knows. That’s just how I think it went down. I’ve not spoken to anyone about this yet; it’s just something I was thinking about when I was in the gym recently. This is just how I’ve pieced it all together from what I can ascertain about the situation.”
“You still go to the gym?” He seemed more amazed by this than he was by my theory concerning the demise of Noel Partias.
“Yeah. How’d you think I stay so young and beautiful?” I grinned. He didn’t.
“I don’t. Not anymore. I haven’t worked out for ages.” He shook his head, looking depressed. “My life’s become a shitstorm of bad news, you know that?”
I didn’t reply. What could I say, other than that I agreed with him and it was nobody’s fault but his own?
“I didn’t mean to kill him, Rob, honest to God I didn’t.” He was imploring me to believe him. “Yeah, I hit him a couple, but that’s all. I wasn’t gonna kill him.”
Neither of us spoke for about ten seconds. The silence was heavy. Turley looked as though he was awaiting bad news from a cancer specialist after chemotherapy had failed.
“I never did find Bernie,” he said. “I’d have kicked his fucking head in if I’d found him. God knows where he is.”
“I know where he is.”
Turley looked optimistic for a second. “Yeah? Where is the little bastard?”
“He’s in custody; arrested yesterday. He more or less confirmed your story about how Thornwyn got the robbery organised when I spoke to him.”
“You arrested him?”
“I did indeed,” I said smugly.
“What you get him for?”
“Possession of an offensive weapon for starters. Said he was only carrying a knife because some crazy cop was threatening to kill him. I wonder whom that might be?” I fixed Turley with a benign stare. “He’s being held in custody waiting for me to go back and talk to him.”
Between the two of them I was now sure I more or less had the story of the night of the robbery at Byzantium. Bernie was an incorrigible lowlife, but it saddened me Turley had been involved. The corruption hearing was bad enough but robbing a gun shop, with the proceeds being placed with a jihadist Muslim, put Turley beyond the pale.
“So, what happens now? Am I nicked?” he asked quietly. There was no easy way to tell him what I thought.
“You were right just now, Bri, you’re in the shit. With what I now know about what Thornwyn’s been up to, there’s no doubt he’s gonna offer up some sacrificial lambs if it’ll get his liability reduced, and you and Bernie, I’m afraid, are those lambs. There’s no CCTV evidence but it’ll still be his word against you two. You’re already suspended and, what with the IPCC hearing next week . . .” I let the sentence tail off. He knew what I was alluding to.
Despite his stupidity, and the virtual certainty he was facing years in prison, I was surprised to find myself feeling sorry for Turley. When I’d joined Thornwyn’s team nearly six and a half years back, he’d still just about been able to function as a productive police officer, and I had some good memories of the times we’d been out making arrests and of hearing some of his funny stories about times he’d been plastered, like the time he’d gone out on a bender and got, in his words, royally mortal drunk, but somehow driven back home and fallen asleep in the car in the garage. Next morning, when he’d come to, still under the influence, he’d driven into work still wearing the same clothes as the day before, including the puke-up down the front of his shirt which he’d failed to notice. What he’d also not realised was that, driving away, he’d been dragging his wheelie bin down the road, spilling rubbish everywhere. It was an amusing story and he’d dined out on that one for ages.
But his increasing reliance on the bottle had cost him his marriage, and his debts with his bookie had led him to help Thornwyn rob a weapons shop. There was also the fact he was already under suspension for aiding Thornwyn in acting in a corrupt manner whilst a police officer, plus the very real likelihood he’d be charged with the manslaughter of Noel Partias at the very least. I couldn’t remember how old Turley was but I guessed somewhere around mid-forties, though he now looked older. The likelihood was that he’d be close to sixty when he emerged from prison, assuming he survived the ordeal, and he’d be unemployable and would have no police pension to collect as this’d be forfeited upon going inside.
“You know what? I was gonna ask you if you’d be a character witness for me when the IPCC starts its hearings. I’m allowed to have someone I worked alongside who could testify to my performance as a police officer. But I don’t suppose you’d be interested now, would you?” He said this in a regretful tone.
“I’d have to take my union’s advice on that one, plus I’d need to see Smitherman and talk to him about it,” I replied evenly.
“That’s a polite way of telling me to fuck off, ain’t it, Rob?” He looked hurt for a moment, then laughed. “Actually, I don’t blame you, mate. I’d tell someone like me to fuck off if they asked me to speak on their behalf.”
There was nothing more to say. I stood up.
“You take care, Bri, look after yourself. Make sure you keep it up.” I was referring to his abstaining from alcohol for longer periods.
He nodded. We fistbumped each other as I walked past on the way out. I wished him good luck.
“Thanks, mate.”
I left him to think about the future. I didn’t realise it then, but this was to be the last time I ever saw Brian Turley alive.
It was only just past one o’clock but so far I’d managed to break the story put forward by Byzantium’s manager and got him to admit to his culpability in the robbery at his shop, and now I’d solved the riddle of who’d killed Noel Partias. Not too bad a morning’s work. Maybe I could find Madeleine McCann before my shift was through.
Thinking about the robbery from Byzantium in the car, I knew the instigator was already in prison awaiting sentence for offences unrelated to this, Bernie was in custody and Turley was about to undergo an intensive interrogation from the IPCC. The weapons man, Noel Partias, was dead, and the shop manager had admitted his own complicity in the robbery. The weapons had been passed on to Khaled al-Ebouli. I knew he worked in the History Department at Westminster University, so I drove back to the Yard, parked and walked to their central London campus.
The History Department was located north of Oxford Street on Regent Street, on the site of the old Regent Street Polytechnic. It was a large, impressive building with colourful posters in many of the front windows.
I entered the foyer and crossed the reception area. There were dozens of students milling around and talking excitedly. There was a wall nearby covered with notices advertising forthcoming events, including hustings for the student union president. The atmosphere felt vibrant and alive with excited young students and, for a brief moment, I was nostalgic for my student days at King’s a decade ago.
At the enquiries desk I asked for Khaled al-Ebouli and was directed to his office on the third floor. I took the stairs and passed a number of students going down, a couple of whom looked at me suspiciously.
On the third floor I walked along the corridor and found the office I was looking for. The door was open and I tapped lightly on it. Khaled al-Ebouli was behind the desk typing on a laptop. He looked up and gestured for me to enter. I did. He nodded towards an empty chair. I sat down.
I knew I’d not get an admission or anything like that from him. My intent was simply to let him know he was on Special Branch’s radar and we had him in our sights. I was interested in his reaction to what I was going to put to him.
“No. I’m a King’s boy myself.” I produced ID and showed it to him. “DS McGraw, Special Branch. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
He smiled ironically and sat back. “What do you want this time?” he asked in a neutral tone.
“This time? I’ve never met you before.” I grinned at him. He didn’t appreciate my attempt at humour. Was there even any place for humour in the world of the fanatical jihadist or would that constitute bourgeois distractionism? “You know a man named Noel Partias, I believe.”
He thought for a moment. “Is he one of my students? I can’t place the name.”
“No, he’s not a student. You bought something from him not too long ago and we have an interest in the merchandise involved.”
“And what was this? What is it I’m supposed to have bought?” He adopted a challenging pose, leaning back in his chair.
“Let’s not waste each other’s time, eh, Khaled?” I stood up. “We both know you know who Noel Partias is and what he supplied you with. I know what they are, I know where they were stolen from and what you plan to do with them. I know about your jihadist views. I know you’re involved with Muearada.” I paused to let my words register. “Incidentally, Noel Partias died recently, and not from natural causes either. Were you aware of that?”
“I don’t know the person you’re talking about, so how am I to be aware of his death from whatever cause?” His English was good and he spoke almost fluently with little trace of any accent.
“Whatever. I’m just letting you know you’re gonna be watched like a hawk from now on. I hope you like company, ’cause you’re gonna get lots of it.”
His expression didn’t change. He sat looking nondescript, like he was in a waiting room calmly waiting for his appointment. “Have you finished threatening me?”