Games with the Dead

by James Nally

  Still not so much as a text from the Kidnap Unit, technically my current employer. I wish to God they’d get on with stitching me up over Julie Draper. There is truly no punishment worse than waiting for punishment.

  DI Adrian Lambert insists on meeting us at the Nathan Barry murder scene, right away. Later today, Fintan has an errant Tory MP to ‘front up’ in that neck of the woods, so we bomb down together, spit-roasting in the welded Porsche.

  ‘Inspector Lambert is somewhat obsessed,’ warns Fintan. ‘Failing to get a collar for this Nathan Barry murder stalled his career. It’s now been investigated three times and they still can’t make it stick.’

  ‘Who do they think did it?’

  ‘You’re better off keeping an open mind. You’ll be the only police officer who’s done so since about day two.’

  DI Lambert’s pacing the car park as we pull in. He’s slight, a little hunched with a long nose. ‘Oh and he’s Welsh, so he gets very animated,’ warns Fintan. Lambert looks gaunt, nervous. His face seems too red, his hair too black, styled in a disturbing Hitler-Youth undercut, making him look like an emaciated Barry Humphries.

  We race through formalities, then I explain my mission; to see if there’s any connection between this case and the murder of Julie Draper. Lambert looks surprised. It’s the first he’s heard of it.

  ‘It’s the first anyone’s heard of it, Guv,’ I smile. ‘And I’d like to keep it that way.’

  ‘Understood. I hear Kipper sent a note yesterday threatening to take a child next time,’ he says.

  ‘You buy the whole Kipper theory then?’ asks Fintan.

  ‘I don’t know squat about that case,’ says Lambert, strolling over to a corner of the car park. ‘But I know everything there is to know about this one. So, six years ago, April 3, 1988, about 9.30pm, a pub regular drove into the car park and saw Nathan Barry lying here, on his back, with an axe embedded in the left side of his face, right up to the hilt.

  ‘The pathologist is in no doubt that he was effectively executed. He’d suffered three axe wounds to the head, each one would’ve been sufficient to kill him. The final blow was delivered by a backhand motion as he lay on his back, the axe penetrating four inches into his brain. The coroner had quite a job removing it. Whoever attacked him meant to kill him.

  ‘The pathologist believes the attacker sneaked up on Nathan from behind, was less than five foot eight inches tall and left-handed.

  ‘It was a common Taiwanese-made domestic axe, which could’ve been bought in any number of places and had no serial number. Elastoplast had been wrapped around the handle to ensure we couldn’t take any prints off it. And it had been sharpened for the job. The paramedics who treated him found a few hundred quid in cash in his left-hand trouser pocket, so it wasn’t a robbery.

  ‘The first CID officer on the scene sealed off the car park and uniform officers took statements from everyone inside the pub.

  ‘Forensics struggled to take prints off Nathan’s car or any others in the car park. It was a cold, frosty night which is a nightmare for them. Last year, they found trace DNA on the axe but the sample is too minute to process.

  ‘We got a lot of criticism for failing to seize glasses and ashtrays from inside the pub for prints or DNA analysis, to check if a known offender had been drinking here that evening. My argument is that whoever killed Nathan had been waiting outside in the car park and had never set foot in the pub. Why would he risk being seen?’

  Fintan pipes up. ‘Do you regret not seizing the glasses and ashtrays now, Adrian?’

  ‘Every bloody day. But we didn’t know much about DNA then. What we did know was how to spot a suspect. It’s a known fact that ninety per cent of victims know their killer. This was clearly personal. At first, we speculated that it may have been someone he’d upset in the course of his work. But someone else kept cropping up, right from the outset.

  ‘Nathan had been in the pub that evening with his business partner, John Delaney. In fact, Delaney had left the pub just moments before Nathan.

  ‘I went personally to tell Delaney the news of Nathan’s murder. He opened the door looking sweaty and agitated, as if he’d been expecting us. His first words to me were, “I’m not the mad axeman of Croydon”. I asked him how he knew and he started dropping names of all his cop pals in Croydon CID. All this time, his wife’s watching the TV, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, believe it or not. She doesn’t look up even once.

  ‘I take him in to make a statement. He tells us he and Nathan had agreed to meet an associate here in the White Horse that night called Tommy Buchan for a drink to discuss a loan to their company, BD Investigations.

  ‘We track down Buchan who denies it flat out. Turns out Delaney called him after he left the White Horse that night and arranged to meet him at a wine bar a few miles away.’

  Fintan editorialises. ‘Trying to create an alibi after the event, perhaps?’

  ‘Delaney’s car phone records confirm this call to Buchan at 21.36. They also show a call from a public phone box to his car phone at 21.33. Now the system can’t identify public phone numbers, but we believe that call was made from the public phone outside the White Horse.’

  ‘The killer confirming job done,’ says Fintan.

  Lambert nods.

  ‘Over the next few days, we discovered Delaney is a crook. Behind Nathan’s back, he’d been up to all sorts, including hiring cops to guard Riley’s car auctions in Bermondsey.

  ‘Now, BD Investigations wasn’t insured to do this kind of work, but Delaney signed the contract and employed serving cop friends, who he paid cash. One night last June Delaney decided to take the day’s takings to the bank’s night safe alone. According to him, the safe was glued shut so he’d no option but to take the cash home. Guess what? Outside his house, he’s sprayed with ammonia and robbed of the fifteen grand.

  ‘Riley, owner of the car auctions, doesn’t believe a word, goes to see Delaney in hospital, where he’s dabbing his eyes with tissue and joking with the nurses. Riley sues BD Investigations for the fifteen grand and that’s how Nathan finds out about the entire racket. He goes mental, firstly because it’d been going on behind his back, secondly because Delaney had employed serving officers, which is against the rules, and thirdly because of the missing money. He refuses point-blank to stump up half.

  ‘Anyway, we need to prove this, so we go looking for any paperwork concerning the Riley contract, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Employees at BD Investigations tell us that the head of Croydon’s murder squad, Detective Sergeant Phil Ware, attended the office the morning after the murder and seized it all, including the Riley’s car auctions file.

  ‘That same morning, Detective Sergeant Phil Ware took the first formal statement from Delaney, in which he makes no mention of his row with Nathan over the Riley auction.

  ‘On Sunday, five days after Nathan’s murder, DS Ware reveals to me that he and Delaney are old friends going back years. To make matters worse, Ware admitted that he’d been one of the officers moonlighting for Delaney at Riley’s car auctions. Of course, we kick him off the case but by then he’d already buggered our investigation.

  ‘Phil Ware retired on the sick and is now a partner with Delaney in BD Investigations.’

  Fintan again: ‘So you’re convinced that Delaney and Phil Ware were co-conspirators in Nathan’s murder?’

  ‘Nathan had never drunk in here before that night. This pub is in Phil Ware’s jurisdiction. None of Nathan’s regular pubs were. Delaney lured him here for that reason, so that his murder would be investigated by his pal who heads the local murder squad. Of course, Delaney didn’t swing the axe. Why get your hands dirty? But he had someone waiting outside that night who did.

  ‘Now, how many people could’ve known Nathan was in here that night? Delaney’s phone records show he made a call to Ware’s direct line at Croydon police station on that evening at 5pm. I’m certain they were in cahoots.’

  My brain is clinging on, just, and screaming
one question: ‘So Delaney is behind Nathan’s murder, Ware helped derail the investigation. Who wielded the axe?’

  ‘Delaney’s brothers-in-law at that time were Chris and Gary Warner, major-league drugs importers with a history of extreme violence. Their alibis for the night are flimsy, to say the least. My information is that they even boasted about the murder in their local pub. We’ve arrested and questioned them but we haven’t got any forensic evidence or witnesses willing to tell us what they know.’

  Fintan starts pacing the car park. ‘My old crime editor used to say there are only three motives for any murder. Dough, blow or a ho!’

  Lambert frowns, confused.

  ‘Money, drugs or a woman.’

  He stops and turns to Lambert. ‘Why don’t you tell Donal here how there was more to Delaney having Nathan Barry wiped out than a fifteen-grand civil court action?’

  Lambert hardly lets him finish. ‘Nathan and Delaney were part of the West Croydon Lunch Club, a group of self-styled local high achievers who used to meet every other Friday and had gained legendary status for drunken shenanigans. Turns out Delaney and Nathan were romancing the same married woman, a local beautician called Karen Moore.

  ‘In fact, before he went to the White Horse on the night of his murder, Nathan met Karen Moore at a local wine bar where they were seen in intimate conversation for well over an hour.’

  ‘She must know something,’ I say. ‘Especially if things had come to a head between Nathan and Delaney.’

  ‘I’m afraid Delaney has closed that line of enquiry on us,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘He left his wife and married Karen Moore a few months later.’

  Chapter 11

  Coombe Road, Croydon

  Saturday, June 18, 1994; 15.00

  Fintan and I remain astride the White Horse for a long liquid lunch.

  ‘They’ll never solve the Nathan Barry murder,’ he declares. ‘Not unless they get a walk-in confessor, a witness to the actual murder or some incontrovertible DNA.’

  I sigh. ‘I just can’t see how there can be any connection to Julie Draper, except the fact they both worked in Croydon.’

  ‘At least the Draper case is live. The Nathan Barry case looks dead and buried.’

  ‘A bit like my career,’ I grumble.

  ‘There is another option, you know?’ he says, surveying me archly like a disappointing art project. ‘And this option would get you into CID tomorrow.’

  ‘Like I’ve said before, I’m not joining the Freemasons.’

  ‘Virtually every cop I know is in it. It’s just a boys’ club, Donal, you can use it purely for your own ends.’

  ‘Virtually every criminal I’ve put away is in it too. It’s rotten to the core. I’m having no part in any dodgy secret societies. Anyway, I thought you had some philandering Tory to front up for tomorrow’s paper?’

  ‘I do,’ says Fintan, checking the time. ‘We always leave it as late as possible, so he can’t get hold of a lawyer or a judge or the Prime Minister or anyone else who might shoot the story down or leak it to a rival.’

  ‘What about his right of reply?’

  ‘That’s what I’ll be giving him at precisely 5pm. He wanted me to come to his home or constituency office, but I’ve insisted on a hotel lobby.’

  ‘Why? In case he was planning on producing his Boer War Elephant gun?’

  ‘Amongst other reasons.’

  ‘And what is this man’s grave crime?’

  ‘He’s a fifty-three-year-old married dad-of-two who had an affair with a rent boy about four years ago.’

  ‘And how does this sexual peccadillo detract from his performance as an MP?’

  ‘He’s a “hang ‘em and flog ‘em”, church-going Tory for one thing. And, last week, he defied the party whip to vote against reducing the gay age of consent to sixteen, in line with the heterosexual age of consent.’

  ‘How old is his rent boy?’

  ‘There’s the rub, for want of a better word. When the Right Honourable George Field began relations with this man, he was a sixteen-year-old boy, which, under the law he himself championed, makes him a child sex offender and, even worse for a politician, a rampant hypocrite.’

  ‘God his poor kids. And wife.’

  ‘She must have known he swung both ways before she married him.’

  ‘How can you just assume that? And how can you square doing this to his kids?’

  ‘His sons are cocooned at some twenty-grand-a-year private school where buggery is virtually on the curriculum. I’m sure their wealthy friends will rally around and get them all massively paid numbers in the City.’

  ‘Is it a class thing with you really, Fintan? Are you the hunt sab who cares about foxes, or the one who just loves knocking over-privileged gits off their expensive horses?’

  ‘A bit of both,’ he grins, jumping to his feet. ‘Come on. Saturday is Take Down a Tory Day!’

  Chapter 12

  Lingfield, Surrey

  Saturday, June 18, 1994; 17.00

  Our Porsche turns not a single head outside the Lingfield Park Country Club.

  ‘You watch, he’ll sit there and lie through his teeth,’ says Fintan.

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘Jesus, don’t they teach you anything at cop school? Two classic giveaways. If he glances low and left directly after the question, he’s about to lie. If he keeps starting sentences with things like “truthfully” and “honestly”, then he’s in the act of lying. Look and learn.’

  I recognise George Field MP as soon as we walk into reception. Tweedy, rotund, red-faced and hairy-eared, he’s every inch the rugger-bugger buffoon who some- how defies evolution by earning the right to run the country.

  Fintan introduces himself. Field wobbles to his feet, snorting like an addled rhino. He introduces us to Theresa Brunt, a Tory spin doctor dubbed ‘Total’ Brunt by Private Eye magazine and a ringer for one of those cross-dressing brutes who frequented Mother Clap’s in Victorian London.

  We all sit and, like a magician flourishing a bunch of flowers, Fintan plucks a photo out of thin air and holds it beneath Field’s purple, pockmarked nose.

  ‘What is your relationship with this man?’ he asks.

  Field’s nasal breathing grows so equine, it causes the photo clasped between Fintan’s thumb and forefinger to flap. He takes a quick glance low to his left and blusters: ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life.’

  ‘He says he had a sexual relationship with you four years ago, when he was sixteen years old.’

  ‘Absolute poppycock,’ harrumphs Field. ‘Honestly, are you really going to believe the word of some skanky drug-addict rent boy over mine?’

  ‘How do you know he’s a skanky drug-addict rent boy?’ smiles Fintan.

  George lists like a torpedoed old warship. Time to tag his prize-fighter mistress of spin.

  ‘We know you were behind this ghastly man ringing George the other day and trying to trick him into admitting things over the phone,’ she hisses. ‘To resort to such desperate, underhand tactics clearly exhibits you lack any credible evidence to run this story. I dare say you’ve done your research into the Field family and are aware of their standing and influential friends?’

  ‘I’m just trying to establish the facts, Theresa.’

  ‘Well here’s one undisputable fact for you, Mr Lynch,’ she snaps. ‘George’s solicitor has Carter-Ruck on standby. If you print one word of this nonsense, we will sue. Do you understand?’

  ‘Loud and clear, Theresa,’ says Fintan, oozing humility. ‘We’d best be on our way then.’

  I can’t believe he’s giving up, just like that. At the exit, he turns back. ‘By the way, George Field MP,’ he bellows for the whole room to hear, ‘our mutual friend Tommy wants to know if you still have those cigar-butt scars? You know, the ones he branded on your backside?’

  Fintan scarpers, gesturing wildly to a fat man sat in a parked car. I recognise his trusty old snapper Ray ‘Trundle’ Taylor from previou
s capers.

  ‘Raymondo, check out the wheezing tweed and his tranny Tory wench at the table nearest the fireplace. As soon as they step outside this door, hose them the fuck down.’

  I follow Fintan’s gravel-stomp back to the car.

  ‘So, do you have evidence of this affair, or don’t you?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he says. ‘But we should have, very soon.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring the rent boy here? That might have flushed him out.’

  ‘Poor Tommy’s already a nervous wreck. One death stare from Total Brunt and he’d have bottled it.’

  ‘But you believe this Tommy character?’

  ‘It’s always the tiny details that make you realise someone is telling the truth. If George Field has got cigar butt scars on his arse, we’re running this story.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, we’re waiting for him to come out so we can rugby-tackle him to the ground and yank down his trousers?’

  ‘Hopefully it won’t come to that.’

  ‘Hopefully? Jesus, Fintan. What are these cigar scars about anyway?’

  ‘It’s his thing. He made Tommy put cigars out on his arse.’

  ‘My God! Why are the powerful and privileged almost universally into weird sex?’

  ‘Powerful men have overactive libidos. And they just take what they want.’

  Field and Brunt emerge grim-faced to a merciless ‘monstering’ from Ray.

  ‘Right come on,’ says Fintan, leaping out of the car.

  ‘Just for the record, I’m taking no part in pulling this man’s pants down.’

  Flashgun-blind, the politicians stagger about the gravel like tasered apes. To my intense relief, we gallop past them, back into the hotel reception lounge.

  Fintan strides urgently towards the table they just left, reaches under where he’d sat and says: ‘Mmm, Juicy Fruit.’

  He retrieves a matchbox-size metal box which he’d stuck to the table’s underside with chewing gum.

  ‘Let’s hope I set this up okay.’

  As we speed-walk back to the car, Fintan explains all.

  ‘Alex Pavlovic, our venerable Prince of Darkness, came up with the idea. He calls it “our Inspector Goole” after that play, you know, An Inspector Calls. Basically, whenever we “front up” someone with an accusation, we leave this bug behind to catch what they say as soon as we leave. We’ve discovered that’s when they always blab. He’s such a good judge of human nature that man. He genuinely scares me.’