Buried - DC Jack Warr Series 01 (2020)

by LaPlante, Lynda

  Jack had no memory of Trudie and he’d already heard bad things about her from his Aunt Fran, but to hear scum like Tony Fisher slagging her off in such a horrific way was more than he was prepared to listen to. An uncharacteristic temper began to boil up inside him which, for now, he kept a lid on because there was more he needed to know.

  ‘Trudie would come to the club and hang around the biggest wallets till one of them took her home. If it was a quiet night and she got no takers, she’d wait around for me to finish work and we’d take a bottle of something up into Arnie’s office. He had a great big leather sofa, but she liked me to shag her on his overpriced, antique, French-polished, poncey fucking desk. It was his pride and joy ‒ he’d say, “Don’t touch my desk with your filthy hands.” And I’d think, “I ain’t, bruv, but Trudie Nunn’s been all over it with her filthy arse!” Ha! He had no idea! God, I ain’t thought about Trudie Nunn in years.’ And with that image in his mind, Tony grabbed his groin and left his hand there until the memory passed. ‘What a bleedin’ shame she’s dead. A visit from good old Trudie would go down a treat right now.’

  If looks could kill, Tony would have fallen stone dead right there in front of all the prison guards. As Tony grinned his horrific psychopathic grin, Jack glanced down at his own hands in his lap – his fists clenched tight and his knuckles white. He was filled with a simmering rage that he’d never felt before.

  ‘And Jimmy Nunn . . .’ Tony went on, oblivious to what was going on in Jack’s mind. ‘The last time I heard Jimmy’s name mentioned was in connection to that armed raid on a security van in the Strand underpass. That was one of Harry Rawlins’ fuck-ups.’ He bellowed laughing. ‘Harry bloomin’ Rawlins! I’d never seen my brother so overjoyed to see someone put six feet under. He spent a fucking fortune on the wreath.’ Tony mimed the size of it with his hands, then went on to explain how every criminal in London had felt the same way as Arnie did. ‘Harry Rawlins was the only man who could put the wind up my brother. He’d never been arrested for so much as a parking ticket but, Jesus Christ, he was like an octopus with tentacles in everyone’s business. There was nothing that man didn’t know about the criminal world, and that’s what made him so dangerous. If you’d ever worked for the son of a bitch, you’d never be safe again.’

  Jack really wanted to hear more about Jimmy, but Tony seemed determined to continue talking about himself and Arnie.

  ‘My brother was a bit of an art expert ‒ fenced loads of paintings for Harry over the years. That was his mistake. Like I just said, once you was involved with Harry, he had you by the balls. ’Cos if he went down, so did you. I never met the man personally, on account of him always doing business with the organ grinder and not the monkey – that’s what he called me, the cheeky bastard. A “monkey”. Fuck him! The newspapers made out Harry’s funeral as being half of London paying their respects . . . It wasn’t. They were making fucking sure the bastard was dead. Criminals and coppers. And we were all wrong!’

  In a flash, Jack’s mind leapt from the hatred he felt for Tony to an overdue penny finally dropping . . . If Harry Rawlins was shot to death by his wife in the autumn of 1985 ‒ who did Tony and half of London watch being buried approximately nine months earlier?

  Tony was still talking ‒ having a whale of a time ‒ but at least he was back on topic now.

  ‘Jimmy Nunn was a fucking nobody who did what he was paid to and then kept his head down, spending his cut on women and cars till the next job came along. So, I’ll tell you something for nothing, DC whatever-you-said-your-name-was ‒ if Jimmy’s still got his head down after, what, thirty-somefink years, then he took one hell of a cut from his last job.’

  ‘You think he’s got his feet up somewhere?’

  ‘If there’s one thing Jimmy Nunn was good at, it was running away. He was there for a good time, not a long time . . . as they say. He’d do a caper, then disappear. He’d do a bird, then disappear. I mean, if Trudie was mine – full-time I mean – I wouldn’t have left her.’

  Jack noted Tony’s last comment about Jimmy Nunn probably being on the run with a load of cash. But, as he stared at Tony, he could also see the very second that the dirty old man’s mind strayed back to the good ol’ days of shagging Trudie on his brother’s French-polished desk. Jack’s nostrils flared and his eyebrows dipped.

  ‘Somefink I said?’ Tony grinned. Jack pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. ‘Don’t go yet, son. We’re having a nice chat, ain’t we?’

  Jack paused. ‘I hear the man who attacked you is recovering well.’

  His tone was now very different. The sucking-up had stopped, the pandering to Tony’s ego had stopped and he was suddenly playing a different game. Tony could feel the change in mood, although he didn’t know what had brought it on.

  ‘I also hear that you’re on a warning. One more bit of trouble and you’ll get a nice, long stint in solitary.’ Jack placed his fists squarely on the table, looked Tony straight in the eye and whispered, ‘I’m going to make sure you die in here. No one looked up to you then and no one looks up to you now ‒ as Harry Rawlins said, you’re just a big, stupid ape.’

  Jack waited for the second Tony’s brain disengaged and animal instinct took over. It didn’t take long. Tony leapt to his feet, dodged round the table and charged. Jack, being thirty years his junior, dodged his incoming fist with relative ease; but Tony swung again and again. He was strong and relentless but Jack was fast and that’s all that mattered, because all he had to do was stay out of the way. The alarms sounded within seconds and all of the other inmates started cheering for Tony. The guards ran across the room, Asps extended, and landed a couple of blows on Tony’s back but he didn’t even flinch. The next three hits landed on his thighs and they took him to the floor. Once he was down, there was no getting up. With his face pressed against the cold blue lino, Tony spat out every threat he could think of while Jack walked calmly from the room.

  *

  In the incident statement Jack was asked to write, he neglected to mention that he’d called Tony an ape, and instead made something up about bringing up the wrong person from Tony’s past and stirring bad memories.

  ‘He’s got quite a temper, hasn’t he?’ Jack said innocently.

  The prison warder reassured Jack that Tony would have plenty of time to think about his actions in solitary confinement. Jack was then given back his mobile, his wallet and his warrant card, and he left.

  Once outside the prison, he checked his phone. There was one missed call from Ridley, with an accompanying voicemail asking if he’d found Julia Lawson and Angela Dunn yet. Shit! Jack hadn’t even started looking.

  CHAPTER 14

  Jack sat at his desk with his trouser leg pulled up to just below his knee. When stumbling backwards in an attempt to stay an arm’s length away from Tony Fisher, he’d banged his calf on something and now a large bruise was forming. He could feel it as he’d walked up the station stairs and now, as he looked at the purplish-black circle on his skin, it reminded him of the satisfaction he felt in seeing Tony face down on the floor. It was as much of a power rush now as it had been at the time. Jack was by no means a violent man, but he loved the feeling of manipulating a thick shit like Tony Fisher into securing himself a stint in solitary confinement. It was the first cruel thing Jack had ever done in his life, but he felt no guilt.

  Two hours and several cups of tea later, Jack sat ploughing through the extensive police files on Harry Rawlins. Rawlins’ actual file was surprisingly thin because he was too smart to be tied to most of his suspected crimes; it was the unproven files that were extensive. George Resnick had collated hundreds of case reports which, if they were all accurate, showed Harry Rawlins to have been one of the most prolific gangsters of the 1980s. No wonder Resnick had been like a dog with a bone – Rawlins would have been the catch of the century.

  Jack flicked through the crime scene photos of the explosive Strand underpass robbery from 1984. Joe Pirelli and Terry
Miller had been in the back of the van when it burst into flames. Pirelli had been identified from his dental records, as the hands were never found and he couldn’t be printed. Miller was identified from a partial thumb and forefinger print from what remained of his left hand. And ‘Rawlins’, assumed to have been the driver, was blown sky-high. All forensically identifiable parts of his body were too badly damaged to be of any use. However, a cadaver dog had eventually found a charred left forearm about seven feet from the van, not belonging to either Pirelli or Miller. This arm wore a gold Rolex watch with the inscription ‘To Harry – Love Dolly – 12/2/62’. And so the mangled, unidentifiable third body ‒ missing its head, both legs and one arm ‒ was documented as belonging to Harry Rawlins.

  Jack looked at the images showing this mammoth jigsaw puzzle of body parts. He understood why 1980s forensics had identified this man as Harry Rawlins – but the fact remained that Rawlins had been shot to death by his wife several months later, so the third man in the Strand underpass robbery actually remained unidentified. It could be one of a dozen known criminals from the time. It could even be Jimmy Nunn. Jack sighed heavily as he weighed up the possibilities. His birth dad could be in a thousand pieces, wrongly buried in place of Harry Rawlins back in 1984, or he could be hiding out on some paradise island spending stolen money. Maybe even the money from the train robbery. Jack couldn’t decide which discovery would be more disappointing. Then again, neither might be true.

  *

  Jack woke at five o’clock in the morning. His body had moulded into the shape of his desk chair, so for a good few minutes he had to sit motionless, waiting for the blood to start circulating back into his extremities. Jack stared at his computer screen – once again, he’d spent police time and used the police databases to research his own paternity case. If he was caught, he’d be sacked for gross misconduct, but that seemed to encourage him rather than anything else. He was working smart for the first time in a long time and it made him feel good.

  The showers in the station reeked of lemon-scented bleach; the cleaners had been working into the early hours too. Jack watched the mass of shampoo suds slowly spiral down the drain and replayed the events of the previous day in his head. There were two key memories – Tony Fisher’s face being squashed into the blue lino by four prison guards . . . and Ridley asking if he’d found Angela and Julia yet. One memory made him grin with a new-found sadistic thrill; the other made him turn the shower off and race back to his computer.

  *

  ‘Ester Freeman said that Julia Lawson would be in a gutter or a morgue somewhere,’ Jack announced to the attentive squad room.

  Ridley stood in his office doorway leaning against the frame, arms folded, unblinking. He was like one of those paintings whose eyes follow you round the room. Since this investigation began, he had mainly communicated with Jack via voicemail – which Ridley hated. Jack knew that by the time he’d finished speaking, he’d need a damn good excuse for missing yet another one of Ridley’s phone calls yesterday ‒ and ‘I was in Pentonville, without your clearance, asking Tony Fisher about my birth dad’ definitely wouldn’t cut it. It was a good job he was now redeeming himself by having solid leads on Julia and Angela.

  ‘It seems Julia keeps a low profile running a children’s home. Most of the kids she cares for are in trouble with one or both sides of the law, so she doesn’t advertise what she does. She registered as a safe house with the Manchester force, and she takes in the kids of parents who choose rehab programmes instead of prison. And Angela Dunn got married, but didn’t change her name. I have addresses for both of them now.’

  Behind Jack, the two evidence boards were almost full. They spanned 1984 to 2019, and the face of Tony Fisher had been added since the last time Ridley was in the office.

  ‘Good work, Jack. And I’m glad you weren’t injured when Tony Fisher attacked you.’

  Jack felt his face flush. From the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of concern on Laura’s face, but he didn’t take his eyes off Ridley. Jack couldn’t believe that Ridley knew where he’d been all along and had never said a word. Within seconds, it became clear that he wasn’t going to elaborate ‒ he just wanted Jack to know that nothing got past him.

  As Jack’s face slowly cooled down, he continued.

  ‘You requested that I find out more about the Witheys, sir. Tony knew them all back in the day.’

  He told the squad room about Shirley and Greg, and how he’d decided that neither was of great relevance to this investigation. He also told them that Audrey Withey might well have known all the big players vicariously through her children, and that she probably couldn’t be trusted.

  Ridley waited until Jack had finished.

  ‘Remember, Audrey must be kept in the dark about the corpse until a positive ID has been made. Now, write up all your notes from your visit with Tony Fisher, before you head off to Chester to interview Julia Lawson.’

  *

  Sam, who’d just been delivered to Julia by the police and a social worker, was eight years old, with a face that bore witness to a lifetime of horrors. In his soul, he was already a man – a hardened, street-smart, thick-skinned, scowling man. His fists were clenched, his shoulders were tight and his jaw was pushed forward. He was fearless as he stood there, fully prepared to be slapped or punched or locked in a cupboard. What Sam was not prepared for was . . . Julia.

  ‘I’m having cake for lunch,’ she said cheerfully.

  She headed into the kitchen, leaving Sam in the hallway to either follow or not. The back door, directly behind him, was open and children played in the small, fenced-off garden. He was free to run if he wanted to.

  Sam stood by the kitchen table, watching Julia cut a huge slice of chocolate cake and put it on a dinner plate. She surrounded it with two scoops of ice cream, added a spoon and put it on the table.

  ‘Don’t wait for me.’ She smiled.

  Sam was in the chair before she’d finished speaking, scooping up a huge spoonful of cake and ice cream.

  ‘I ain’t fucking staying,’ he grunted as he stuffed his face.

  Julia lifted herself onto the kitchen top and waited for the kettle to boil.

  ‘I bet you ten quid you fucking do.’

  *

  In London, on the third floor of a high-rise flat in Ladbroke Grove, Angela Dunn sat, legs crossed, on her corner sofa surrounded by fabrics and sewing material. Underneath the window was a sewing machine and, to the side of that, were dozens and dozens of transparent plastic boxes, stacked ceiling-high. Each box had a client name written on the outside and each was filled with multicoloured fabrics, lace, buttons, cottons and various other embellishments. Angela had been a self-employed seamstress for more than ten years and she got enough work from her immediate community to keep her busy till her dying day. The wall behind the sofa was papered with family photos, so that not a square inch of plaster could be seen. A vehicle horn musically blared three times and Angela raced down into the courtyard.

  Rob was a hefty, muscular Jamaican man in his early fifties. His speckled grey beard and tightly cropped hair made him look like a tough nut but, as Angela’s arms crept round his boxy waist, he smiled the broadest of smiles, revealing the gold cap on his left lateral incisor, his eyes wrinkled, his face softened and the gentle giant appeared. Angela moved round Rob’s body without letting go, sliding underneath his armpit until she was by his side and his arm was round her shoulder. They looked at the second-hand coach he’d just driven back from the monthly auction in Wimbledon. Rob’s voice was gruff, like that of a lifetime smoker, despite the fact that he’d never taken a single drag.

  ‘The tyres are solid. Seals on the fuel pump are a bit dodgy and the battery needs replacing. It overheated a couple of times on the way back, so the cooling system wants an overhaul. It needs some new bulbs for the brake lights and left indicator. And there’s a horrible smell coming from the air con. Plus the spark plugs make her misfire every now and then—’

&n
bsp; Angela asked the only question she cared about. ‘How many seats?’

  ‘Twenty-five,’ Rob confirmed.

  ‘It’s perfect, Rob! I’ll call the girls and get things moving.’

  Rob paused the conversation to kiss Angela, long and tender. He loved the very bones of her and she adored him. Angela had had her share of useless men and when she found Rob she spared no time in telling him, straight out, that she’d do anything for him as long as he treated her right. Since then, they’d been totally devoted to each other.

  ‘So, the SUV—’ Rob stopped Angela mid-sentence with a peck on the lips.

  ‘You’ve asked me this a dozen times.’

  Angela smiled, her beautiful brown eyes asking him to humour her one more time.

  ‘The Chevvy Suburban was delivered to Amsterdam yesterday morning, collected and driven to the hotel in Düsseldorf by Julia’s lad and put round the back in the coach park where, lo and behold, the CCTV don’t work too well. So, as long as you’re sure the lad’s trustworthy, we’re sound as a pound.’

  Julia’s ‘lad’ had been in Angela’s care and, fifteen years ago, she’d saved his life when he slit his wrists. He’d been systematically abused by his family since birth and he finally snapped. When a boy like that finally meets an adult to love him, his gratefulness knows no bounds. Angela was confident that Julia’s ‘lad’ would kill for her, so hiding a car for her would be a doddle.

  *

  Jack was using his mobile phone torch to see the writing on the gravestones in the otherwise dark churchyard. As he moved through the beautifully kept grass, he hated the fact that Charlie popped into his head – a well-kept plot would be important to him. Jack thought about the cemetery just up the road from his mum and dad’s bungalow in Totnes. It was on a hillside overlooking the sea and Jack used to short-cut through it to and from school – he and the lads would pause on one of the numerous benches to drink cider and smoke tabs. It hadn’t felt disrespectful or naughty; it had felt fine. As though the residents really wouldn’t mind them being there. Unlike tonight . . . Tonight Jack felt very disrespectful, traipsing over grave after grave trying to find the name he was looking for.