Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus

by Charlie Flowers

  We had. One on each side of the scene.

  ‘Zip so far. And in three days’ time, we’ll be doing the Anniversary Stop-Check. That’s when we all flood the area, put roadblocks in, you name it, and canvass everyone we can. Here’s hoping.’

  I looked around. ‘Globe Town Massive’.

  Lennie glanced at me. ‘Say again?’

  ‘Globe Town Massive. This is their turf.’

  ‘Correct. The kids we lifted on suss of this murder were Globe Town.’

  ‘Cleared ‘em?’

  ‘Yeah. Different altercation.’

  14.

  We walked. The blocks and estates of Tower Hamlets gazed back at us blankly, like teeth that needed cavity injections. Lennie put his mobile away. He looked happy. ‘They’ve confirmed the Crimewatch special for later in the week. I’m going to be on it. And they’re going to be broadcasting live from Whitechapel.’

  Both me and Bang-Bang punched his arms. ‘That’s great, Lennie!’

  He grinned a Cheshire Cat grin. ‘Is it ever. This might just clear it up! Like I said, I love Crimewatch. It makes our job so much easier you wouldn’t believe. All that CSI stuff is bollocks. Real crimes are solved by asking people what they saw and when, taking notes, signing them, and then tying up all the loose ends.’

  His phone made a blipping noise. He grimaced. ‘Excuse me.’ He stopped and checked the phone, and grimaced even more. ‘Would you believe the crap we have to put up with? Have a look at this, you two.’

  We craned in to peer at the smartphone screen. ‘I can’t read it, Lennie. What’s it say?’

  ‘I’ll summarise. The Borough Commander is reminding me that any Open Source Intelligence officers attached to my staff, and I think he thinks that’s you two, have to comply with ACPO’s Principles of Computer-Based Electronic Evidence.’

  I stood back. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘What’s an ACPO?’ asked Bang-Bang.

  ‘A private company that thinks it runs the police. Don’t stress about them.’ I replied.

  Lennie continued. ‘Oh, it gets better. He’s on a roll. It then says, “Notes have to be taken of all work, showing dates, end and start times, tools used, sites visited, and the storage path where any electronic material captured was itself located.”’

  ‘Fuck that’, said Bang-Bang.

  Lennie hit a button. ‘Annnnd… email deleted. You two just crack on and let me worry about him.’

  ‘Anyway – now you’re both here, we’re going door-to-door!’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Most of this work is still door-to-door, you know. And written down by hand. Come on, follow me. I’ve taken this postcode for myself and DS Cammack. You two speak the local lingo, right?’

  Both myself and Bang-Bang laughed at the same time. I held up my hand. ‘Mate – we speak Urdu. Bang-Bang speaks Pashto too, but round here it’s mostly Bengali. It’d be a struggle.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘We’d all be fluent, but in different languages. Don’t assume because we’re brown we can automatically speak durka durka.’

  Lennie looked contrite. ‘Taken. When I get back I’ll turn myself in for diversity training.’

  ‘Don’t be daft mate. We’ll help as best we can. If you want, I can get some Blackeyes who speak Bengali into the enquiry, for the duration. Sound good?’

  He nodded. ‘Sounds good.’

  Bang-Bang put her hand up. ‘Lennieeeeee…’

  ‘Yes love.’

  ‘Have we got powers of arrest?’

  She was making her innocent face and turned one shoe in towards the other and folded her arms behind her back. Then she started batting her eyelashes. Lennie was struggling to contain a smile. ‘Only citizens arrest, like anybody else, and that’s only if no police are nearby and also only,’ and he looked significantly at her, ‘using reasonable force.’

  ‘Ah.’

  So we went door to door. This was sweep one. What did you see, who did you see, do you watch Crimewatch, please tune in to watch the special.

  On the junction of Corfield Street, Bang-Bang stopped and rummaged in her Claymore bag. She retrieved a printout and slapped my chest with it. I took it and read it. It said “One-bedroom flat for sale, Borough Road Isleworth TW7”.

  ‘£225,000, Riz bhai. Let’s get the mortgage, ask the boss man. I’ll meet you half way.’

  I shrugged as I looked at the photo. Couldn’t hurt. She’d obviously done her homework. I looked at her. I got that grin.

  ‘Just sayin’ like. Hubby. It’s got car parking round the back, and a garden. And a shed!’

  ‘OK. But where are we going to keep all your shoes?’

  ‘The hall, silly. Or maybe…maybe a bespoke walk-in wardrobe. So long as my Manolos and Louboutins have a home.’

  She only had one pair of each. I knew she was winding me up.

  The rest of that drizzling afternoon was spent door-to-door, as promised, dealing with OAPs and uncomprehending Bengali housewives. No-one had seen or heard anything. I took the time to watch Lennie in action, doing his old-school copper thing. I had to admit he was quite good. We got quite a few cups of tea.

  After witness or non-witness thirty-two, I took Lennie to one side. ‘What now?’

  He looked up from his notes and smiled at me. ‘This is how the real thing goes when you have no real leads and no informers. We just have to wait for the hammer to fall.’

  ‘Right. Meaning we’d best wait on target?’

  ‘Yep, we’re gonna be living out of police stations and off takeaways for the foreseeable.’

  I looked at Bang-Bang, but I needn’t have bothered. She was singing to herself, in a little bubble of her own, and sketching on the back of a scientific paper. I hazarded a look at its title. I read it aloud slowly. “Journal of The Royal Society... Geographic profiling applied to testing models of… bumble-bee foraging?”

  She looked up. ‘Haaaan ji. Aisa hi kuch hai. And it might just help.’

  ‘I’m sure…’

  Lennie came back. ‘There is one other thing about this enquiry that we haven’t released to the public. And won’t. I’m authorised to brief you both in though.’

  He paused and looked down the street. ‘We think he’s taking trophies.’

  Lennie explained the procedure regarding trophies as we walked back in to the investigation suite, past a freshly printed poster about the late Helen Farmer. ‘Any info coming in that could be prejudicial to the investigation is kept between us until I see fit to release it. In this instance, it’s in case a trophy item is mentioned by a suspect before it was made known. That implicates them. We’ve also put this on a strictly need-to-know basis within the team and all officers involved have signed an internal secrecy document. You two…’ he paused and raised an eyebrow, ‘… are exempt by orders of the Home Secretary. Lucky you.’

  A civilian staff member came over to get Bang-Bang and I set up with our access codes to the HOLMES 2 network. Lennie called across the office. ‘You gonna be OK on that?’

  I nodded. ‘We use this at work. Don’t worry, I’ll get her up to speed.’ I turned to Bang-Bang as I sat before a PC. ‘OK, Mrs Sabir, get ready to take some notes.’

  ‘Ooh, can I sit on your knee?’

  ‘Behave. OK, this is HOLMES 2.’

  She nodded, and diligently wrote “H-O-L-M-E-S…2” in her notepad. As the teams got set up around us, I pulled up a blank file and then a PowerPoint briefing. ‘We’ll get them to put Laptop HOLMES on your netbook. I’ve already got a copy; I’ll leave it to you to get them set up so we can access the database remotely.’

  ‘Cool. Not a problem.’

  ‘Right. Here’s how they break down an enquiry using this thing. It all stems from the Yorkshire Ripper, funnily enough. Too many little details were just sitting there in their files, without one way of tying it all together.’

  ‘Right.’ I had her complete attention now. I’d said Ripper.

  I continued. ‘So, sa
y those staff over there –’ I indicated the dedicated phone line people ‘take a phone call from a witness. That message is typed up here, it gets assigned a Message Number automatically, and bing, that generates a line of enquiry.’

  I switched screens. ‘That message also gets looked at by an officer on the team, who can make it an action. With me?’

  ‘With ya.’

  ‘In this case, the action is for someone to visit the phone witness to take a statement. They hit print, and the system does a hard copy of the action for the officer to take with them.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m getting it. Like Lennie said, no hunches, and no room for errors.’

  ‘Exactly. Right, now the plod interview the witness and they come back with a statement and a PDF. This stands for Personal Descriptive Form, a description of the witness themselves.’

  She grinned. ‘In case dey’s da moiderer.’

  ‘You might say that, I couldn’t possibly comment. The witness statement and the description come back here, the Action is marked complete, and it all gets fed in. That witness is now known to the system as a nominal.’

  She scribbled ‘Nominal. Got it.’

  ‘And the statement, which is typed in via Word, is now available to search via the free text database. At this point, a human being can also mark up the documents, which makes it easier for us to search all the data using the graphical representation which is called a…’ I switched screens again and showed her a graphic network display. ‘… Look familiar to you? A link chart.’

  She grinned even more wolfishly. ‘Bread and butter, babe, bread and butter.’ She was already tapping away on the keyboard and control panels were flashing up. I smiled to myself. In her element. I stood and nodded at Lennie. ‘Get your coat DCI George. We’re going to do another walk of the manor and it’s my shout.’

  Lennie stood and grinned. ‘Pub?’

  ‘Pub.’

  15.

  It was a short walk to the Salmon and Ball from the station. Straight past the fire station, turn right and over the busy junction. On the way, Lennie and I passed another Sharia sticker. This one was different in design. I took a photo of it and tried unsuccessfully to peel it away from the billboard it was fixed to. Lennie watched me with interest. ‘You know this stuff, yeah?’

  I turned to him. ‘Know it? I was in them.’

  ‘Ah. Is this like the Gay-Free Zone stickers that went up in 2011?’

  ‘I think it may well be.’

  ‘God.’ Lennie grimaced. ‘The hoo-hah around those… we had to clamp down on it fast. Could’ve got nasty. Everyone wants to know why it is that we’re finding these stickers at every crime scene.’

  ‘Could be a coincidence.’

  Lennie raised an eyebrow. ‘You believe in coincidences Riz? You being a trained investigator and all?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t believe in coincidences. And it needs following up. And one thing in our favour in that regard, Lennie, is that the nominal leader of that bunch, Anjem, is a tout for Special Branch.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. An unwilling one though. They’ve got him by the cojones. I know some people over there, I’ll see if they can shake his tree, see what turns up.’

  We hit the pub, and started to compare notes, away from the suffocation of the office.

  An hour later Bang-Bang had joined us and I was explaining “EMQ” and its provenance. From the windows of the Salmon and Ball we could see over the tube station entrance, past St John Church and east up Roman Road to the estates, the block balconies swathed in green construction netting. Inside the pub, snooker dominated all the wall screens, and T-Rex played on the jukebox. The two black pub cats glared at us like familiars.

  Lennie nodded at Bang-Bang. ‘How was the training earlier? I’d forgotten to ask.’

  Bang-Bang grimaced. ‘Thanks to our man here, I spent half a day with TSG in Gravesend learning Tasers.’

  Lennie chuckled to himself. I had to ask. ‘Any good?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I spent most of it shooting a man with learning difficulties in a tube carriage. It’s OK though, he was wearing a crash helmet.’

  We laughed. ‘Look on the bright side; you’ve now got your very own phaser.’ Bang-Bang gave a cough of disgust and went to the bar. Lennie sipped his pint and nodded. ‘It was inevitable. My old lot found out about your missus’ epic track record in shooting coppers. They wanted to at least kit her out with something safer.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘By the way. I hear you and DS Rich have a past?’

  ‘You heard right mate. He used to spend most days nicking me, back in the day.’

  ‘You don’t get on then.’

  ‘Not at all, he’s a humourless, racist, throwback’

  ‘OK. You have my word on this – if he fucks up just once, I’ll take him off the team and put him in Traffic.’

  ‘Appreciate it.’

  Bang-Bang returned from the bar with a tatty London A to Z and slapped it onto the table. We flicked to the right pages. Lennie peered at it. ‘I reckon our man has quite a small stamping ground. From here, to… here.’

  He indicated an area bordered by Globe Town, Mile End Road, and Aldgate.

  I followed his tracing. ‘Bit brazen really. Right near the nick and all.’

  I looked outside at a council street camera. ‘And in one of the most CCTV’d-up areas of London, brazen is right.’

  ‘Yeah. He will be on camera. No doubt about that.’

  A silver police transit cruised slowly past. It was fully crewed-up. I nodded. ‘Busy.’

  ‘Of course. Visible presence.’

  Bang-Bang was looking even more closely at the map. ‘But our missing lady, Helen Farmer, was eventually found in Victoria Park, in the lake, right? Outside the catchment area. Down with the bullets and the babiesss….’

  I frowned at her. ‘That’s a myth about the bullets and the babies. But yes, true, the council found her body in the lake when they cleaned the lake yesterday. We’re also pretty sure she was murdered somewhere else and transported there.’

  ‘By a vehicle?’

  ‘Has to be.’

  Bang-Bang nodded and started tracing a triangle on the map. ‘OK. So leaving area doesn’t also mean hunting and killing area… got that.’ She carried on doodling abstract traces.

  Lennie was watching her. ‘You heard of Peter Sutcliffe, Holly?’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t think so, no, why?’

  ‘The Yorkshire Ripper.’

  ‘Ah him! You talked about him in the briefings.’

  ‘We did. I’ll lend you a file. Be right up your street.’

  Bang-Bang got an internet connection going on her netbook and started Googling. She slid the netbook across to me and within a few tries I had a link to a blog.

  ‘Salafi 101’, Bang-Bang muttered.

  Lennie looked interested. ‘And you’re not, Holly?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nah, not me. Sunni by name, sunny by nature.’

  Lennie nodded at our drinks. ‘I thought…’

  We both laughed. ‘Stick around, Lennie’, I said. ‘We drink, alright.’

  ‘And you’re both from some secret Army unit and you’re both AFOs, with weapons that aren’t any kind of police of Army issue.’

  ‘Thasss right!’ I said. ‘And it’s your round!’

  ‘Last time I saw you two, you were just engaged, just back from Afghanistan and getting ready to head off to kill a load of right-wing extremists.’

  We laughed diffidently. He cocked a pint glass. ‘Well. Congratulations on surviving and congratulations on your marriage. How is it?’

  ‘Ask us in a year's time.’

  ‘I hear you two are good with those things then?’

  I caught his look. He knew damn well what we’d been involved in, but his inner detective just couldn’t help it. I smiled inwardly. ‘Been in a few situations where tempers got frayed, yes.’

  ‘Where did you train?’<
br />
  ‘My firm cross-trains with UKSF. Holly here trained out in the States with Todd Jarrett.’

  He looked perplexed. Bang-Bang boredly drawled ‘both thumbs point in tha direction of tha taaar-git.’

  I smiled. ‘Look him up on YouTube. He’s World Practical Shooting Champion. He taught her to shoot in a totally different style than you or I, Lennie. She kind of wraps her hands round the pistol grips and it aims itself. And it works.’

  Bang-Bang batted her eyelashes. ‘It’s just practice, really…’

  I nodded at Lennie. ‘And you? Pistol-wise, I mean.’

  ‘Glock. Only had to pull it twice, once in SO10, once in Flying Squad. I have to tell you I didn’t like it and I really don’t like shootouts. They’re dangerous. People tend to get shot. So I leave it at home, in its alarmed cabinet.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Hate the things. OK, you know what I’m about to say now...’

  We rolled our eyes.

  ‘So I’m going to say it. Please, please, please don't start waving guns about during this investigation, and try to hold back from killing any locals. OK, I’ve said it.’

  ‘Couldn’t agree more’, said Bang-Bang. ‘I’ve been shot and so has Rizwan. Wasn’t fun. Here, look at his scar –’

  I batted her hand away and she pouted. I carried on speaking. ‘So you still have the Glock assigned to you?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. You know why.’

  ‘“Imminent danger.”’

  ‘Yep. And that’s what the Colonel asked me to talk to you about.’

  ‘Can we talk about this later?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I stood. ‘Right. Let’s go to Brick Lane.’

  16.

  ‘Patterns of life’, said Lennie as we walked down Brick Lane against the flow of evening pedestrians. He stopped and put his arms out.

  We came to a halt at a road junction demarcated by a massive piece of graffiti and some roadworks. There were no workers inside the works. Just railed-off earth and a rash of warning signs. To our left, an Overground train whined and clacked over the overhead bridge.

  ‘Right you two. Patterns of life. What do we see at this time?’