by Iain Cameron
LVR was located in South London, in Stockwell, only a few kilometres from Matt’s house in Clapham. He had little difficulty finding the place, situated in a back street in what looked like an old factory crudely converted into industrial units. It was sandwiched between a food wholesaler and an oriental garment manufacturer, neither of which looked as though they were prosperous or busy. Perhaps they were fronts for something else.
The garage looked exactly as he had imagined it would. If he was a driver cruising around, looking for a garage to cure knocking tappets or to repair a burst tyre, he would drive past and search elsewhere. It looked the sort of outfit that would do a botch job, leave the car with a problem it didn’t have in the first place, and remove everything of value out of the glove compartment for good measure.
Matt knew he couldn’t barge inside, hollering at the top of his voice, waving a gun. The guys working in the garage dealt with serious criminals on an almost daily basis, people more frightening than Matt. They wouldn’t be intimidated by him, and if they didn’t respond with a volley of shotgun fire, they would refuse to tell him anything about the van’s owner. If he made any attempt to look at their records, providing they kept them, he would risk taking his life into his own hands.
He had no choice, but to sit and bide his time. If this didn’t achieve the desired result by the close of business, he would consider breaking in once night had fallen. It wasn’t yet eleven in the morning, so it was a long time before he needed to think about doing anything so dramatic, and, given his status of not being there under HSA authorisation, illegal. He hunkered down and prepared himself for a long wait.
TWENTY-FOUR
Matt hadn’t parked directly outside Len’s Vehicle Repairs, but down the road with an oblique view of its front entrance. Having been there for a couple of hours, he decided to take a wander out and see if he could buy any sustenance from a shop nearby, and find a toilet.
He walked past the garage, trying to look like he had a legitimate reason for wandering around at this time on a weekday morning. The door was open a crack, allowing fumes to escape, as he could see wispy smoke spiralling upwards. He glanced inside as casually as he could.
He saw a white van. The driver’s door was open and inside someone was operating the hose of a steam cleaning machine. Another man was positioned at the front of the van, kneeling towards the radiator. He’d only seen it for a second, but it looked as though the van was being given the full interior clean treatment, and being fitted with a new set of licence plates. Matt felt buoyed. If the van had been lined up for a change-of-colour, it would be there for several days. With only a deep clean and plate change, the owner could pick up his sanitised van sometime this afternoon.
Yet again, he was amazed at the confidence of the killers, or was it arrogance? Most criminals, when they had deployed a vehicle on a job, in particular one involving the transport of a murder victim, would torch it afterwards. The criminals in this case must have thought once they had dumped the body in the middle of the night in a remote part of Epping Forest, they were home and dry. It wouldn’t have been a bad assumption, but they had the misfortune to drive past the house of an intermittent sleeper and one who liked to make notes, Patrick Lewin.
At a mini supermarket, Matt bought an appetising-looking baguette, some cans of drink, and a granola bar for later. At the rear of the building and to his great relief, he found a toilet. He sauntered back to the car, a tad more comfortable, but not looking forward to the next few hours of tedium. This time he walked past the garage on the other side of the road, only looking over when a car drove along the street.
He was settling down in the car for a long afternoon when his phone rang.
‘Matt, where are you? I thought you said you were coming into the office today?’
‘Hi Rosie. I know I did, but after seeing David’s body, it hit me harder than I thought. I couldn’t face it.’
‘You’re not, erm, doing a bit of homework on your own?’
‘Get away, I wouldn’t be so daft. Why, has something come up, or is someone looking for me?’
‘In the light of David’s murder, we’ve been instructed by the PM to become more involved in the Lancaster House conference.’
‘What, assess the table plans for the big dinner? Make sure the Saudis don’t sit next to the Iranians, that sort of thing?’
‘Don’t be so flippant, Matt, this is serious. We’ve been assigned to review, and change if appropriate, the security arrangements put in place by David and his team at Five.’
‘That should get their backs up, but as much as I make light of it, I realise it’s an important role. David was tortured, we assume, to reveal security details for someone like the TFF to exploit. If we’re now responsible for these arrangements, it’s our problem if a terrorist group decides to act.’
‘I don’t care if it puts the noses of Five out of joint or not. Our kudos with the PM is at an all-time high, we’d be fools not to take advantage of it.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Office politics left him cold, and the motives and machinations of politicians even colder still.
‘So, we should be seeing you some time in the morning?’
‘Count on it.’
‘Bye Matt.’
‘Bye Rosie.’
Matt had bought a newspaper to read, but instead he picked up the David Burke file. He’d gone through it several times, but on each occasion he usually found something he hadn’t noticed before.
A few locals walked past, although not many as this was an industrial street, not a commercial one. No one gave him a second glance; a man sitting in a car thumbing through sheets of paper didn’t ring any alarm bells. It wasn’t the behaviour of a detective, ready to leap out and grab someone he’d been looking for, or a drug dealer waiting to settle a score. It was more the style of a salesman sorting through purchase orders before visiting a customer.
By two in the afternoon, Matt had scoffed the food he’d bought earlier, and with only one can of juice remaining he was tempted to go out and buy some more. However, the quick glance into the garage he had made on his walkabout had shown him the workers were almost done with the van. They would be finished by now, and would have called the owner to tell him. All that remained was for the customer to arrive and take it away.
Matt hummed and hawed over the pluses and minuses of leaving the car, before finally the need for food surpassed the desire to wait a little longer. He reached for the handle and opened the door. At the same time, he looked over and spotted someone turning into the road.
The newcomer immediately stood out as he didn’t have the down-at-heel manner Matt had seen with others around the area, and his casual gear didn’t look cheap. He walked with the air of a man with somewhere to go, and not one who was about to spend the rest of the afternoon watching television or sitting inside a bookies. Looking closer, his skin looked dusky, Middle Eastern or Asian, and Matt felt disappointed to think he was most likely heading towards the Indian garment business next door to the garage.
With his hand still on the car’s door handle, Matt waited for the guy to turn into the garment place. He would then walk out and buy something to eat. To his surprise, the guy walked past the garment business and turned into the garage. Matt took his hand off the door handle and shut the door.
It took less than ten minutes for the new arrival to inspect the van and pay the bill, before the white van emerged from the garage. It looked as pristine as the day it had trundled off the production line at the Ford plant in Otosan, Turkey. If this van had, as he suspected, been used to carry the body of David Burke, it would now be pointless subjecting it to a forensic examination, as in his experience, garages like LVR knew what they were doing. They were aware of the forensic value of blood splatters, skin cells, and strands of hair, and their steam clean process was designed to destroy all evidence.
When the van turned the corner at the end of the road, Matt followed. In a more organised vehicle following scenari
o than he was conducting now, three or four vehicles would be involved, taking turns at driving behind the mark so they didn’t become suspicious at seeing the same car behind them. They would also be in constant radio contact with each other and an ANPR operator in case they lost sight of the vehicle.
On his own, the job was significantly more difficult, and if the driver left the city and drove into the countryside, it would be near impossible. In London, with nose-to-tail traffic, few people took any notice of the car behind, even if it had been there for the previous ten minutes. Matt decided to hug the van’s rear bumper as much as possible, a tighter position than he would have liked, but he didn’t dare lose it.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘Gov, can you come and take a look at this? I think you’re gonna like it.’
‘Give me five, Georgie. I have something I need to finish first.’
Superintendent Jonty Fleming sighed and tried to focus on the papers in front of him. It had been one of those shitty mornings where no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to catch up. It had started with a breakdown on the A4 which made his boys late for school. He’d missed the CCTV relay of a raid he was responsible for organising in north London. Now, his boss was bending his ear. He needed Fleming’s input on some bullshit presentation he was giving on inclusivity in modern policing.
Trust him to have a boss who saw the Metropolitan Police as a shining beacon in a land full of reactionaries and luddites, and the Serious Crime Unit in which Fleming was Super, the standard for others to follow.
He outlined his comments and emailed them back to his boss but didn’t wait around for a reply. If he liked it, he wouldn’t bother replying. If he hated it, he would chuck it in the bin. Either way, Fleming would hear nothing. His boss’s office was known as ‘The Black Hole’, not because he was a keen astronomer, spaced-out, or particularly untidy, but because anyone passing information in, rarely received anything out.
Before talking to Georgie and finding out what she wanted, he desperately needed something to eat and drink. His boys were good most of the time. They liked football and wrestling, his favourite sports, and they were both doing well at school, meaning he wasn’t called in every five minutes to hear the headmaster read the Riot Act, but they were crap at one thing: getting out of bed in the morning. A late start meant a rushed breakfast, busier roads, and a traffic jam outside their school.
He made a cup of tea in the pigsty his detectives called Costa Cop. The worktop was littered with coffee granules from an industrial-sized Nescafé tin, dirty cups, teaspoons, and it was ringed with old coffee stains. Underneath the worktop was a dishwasher which he had only ever seen Georgie open, making him wonder how some of his team lived.
Shaking his head, he opened the top cupboard. He was over six foot and few could reach the spot where he kept his stash of biscuits. The packet of custard creams was there, but nothing was inside. The bastards. They’d scoffed the lot and the Jaffa Cakes from the week before. Correction, Billy Bunter, AKA, Detective Sergeant Chas Harman, had guzzled them. Every time Fleming saw the greedy bastard, he was filling his face.
Right, he thought. Enough was enough. Whatever shitty duty was required to be done over the next month, Harman would receive the call. With luck, it would be a body decomposing in a heated flat for months, a druggie who’d choked on his own vomit and was lying in shit, or an old woman who’d died but no one could get near for her extremely aggressive Rottweiler.
He stood for a moment, trying to calm down. Right, he thought again, now he was ready to find out what Georgie wanted. A number of murders had taken place in the capital in the last week. Some were black-on-black gang murders, young guys killing one another for no better reason than they had wandered into the wrong area, or disrespected a rival. At one time, this would have been the remit of Operation Trident, although he was sure even they would have become overwhelmed by the volume of work being thrown at them nowadays. Trident was no more, and now it was the responsibility of the various murder teams around the city to investigate their own patch.
‘Georgie,’ he said on approaching the stacked desk of DS Georgie Lewis. She was twenty-five and not so good-looking that other officers would be hanging around her desk, desperate to attract her attention. She loved the job, was as keen as mustard, and nothing was too much trouble.
‘Hi Boss, grab a pew.’
He did as he was told.
‘You know we’ve been on the hunt for Edgar Loman ever since a witness said he saw him stabbing two boys in Brixton?’
‘Yeah. You said you thought he’d maybe skipped back to Jamaica.’
‘He was spotted by a patrol car early this morning. They gave chase and caught him. He’s being booked in downstairs.’
‘Christ Almighty! Will wonders never cease? A success and it isn’t yet lunchtime. Well done, Georgie, another scumbag off the streets.’
‘I didn’t do much. I verified they had the right man and went down there with backup to bring him in.’
‘I assume we’ve got plenty to throw at him?’
‘Loads. He was in possession of a knife, which I’ve sent off for testing, and we found seven packets of coke in his pockets.’
‘Gather a team together and conduct a search of his gaff. I expect you’ll find a lot more of that stuff hidden under his bed.’
‘Will do.’
‘Who’s on the interview?’
‘Me and Beano.’
‘Good. I’ll be in the viewing gallery to see him go down. Make sure you’re well-prepared, I don’t want that sod to slip away. Well done again,’ he said as he stood. He walked back to his office feeling much better.
He could do with a lot more officers like Georgie. She was smart, not frightened to use her initiative, and didn’t accept excuses from anyone. He knew a football team wouldn’t be much cop with eleven David Beckham’s or Cristiano Ronaldo’s, but too many of his officers were lazy, lacking drive, or the job had burned out their mojo. The problem he faced nowadays was the difficulty in making changes. It took time, resilience, and patience, things usually in short supply during the cut and thrust of an intensive murder investigation.
At twelve-thirty, Fleming walked out to an Italian deli on the corner to buy some lunch. It was a dull, but warm afternoon, and he took his ciabatta sandwich and can of San Pellegrino lemon over to one of the seats in the square. On the top floor of their building was a communal seating area where officers could heat food, make hot drinks, and sit down together. It was one of the few opportunities for detectives to mingle with patrol crews, and often a rich nugget of information was mined. However, at times their rivalry and banter would get out of hand, and in a matter of minutes, a quiet lunch could transform into a bawdy edition of Question Time.
Eating his lunch in the square, he told himself it was to make the most of the fine autumnal weather. In truth, he had been promoted to the rank of Superintendent four months before, and he increasingly found he needed to put some deep water between himself and his troops. With many of the important issues he had to deal with nowadays, it would be a catastrophe if he let something slip at a social occasion or in a meeting. The problem would multiply three-fold, and his time in the job be summarily curtailed, if any of it subsequently appeared in the newspapers.
Thinking about papers, he’d brought one with him. It wasn’t The Sun or The Mirror, the ones he used to read as a rookie DC, but The Times. Many of the issues his boss expected him to talk about didn’t appear in sufficient detail in the red tops. If they did, it was to sensationalise the issue, and not to give him the cold, dispassionate analysis found in a broadsheet.
The square wasn’t the pristine, locked variety located in the likes of Mayfair or Bloomsbury, used by the young and beautiful for reading or entertaining their children. This was a public square in East London, ragged around the edges with litter, roaming dogs, and broken fences where shortcuts had been made. Its saving grace was to be surrounded by trees, giving it an elegant, leafy vista fr
om a distance, especially in early summer. The trees and bushes were still thick and verdant but starting to thin and shed their leaves as they prepared for the forthcoming winter.
It was the sort of place he would have liked to have had on his doorstep when growing up in Bermondsey. A central meeting place where teenagers could smoke, try out alcohol for the first time, and chat-up girls. He sighed. Those were pleasures he no longer craved. He’d given up smoking following the death of his wife from cancer two years ago, he didn’t drink much, and hadn’t been out on a date since losing his wife.
He finished his lunch, but he was not looking forward to an afternoon in the viewing gallery, despite thinly-disguised attempts at sounding enthusiastic in front of Georgie. When she had been in the force as long as he had, she would be jaundiced by a scumbag’s repeated ‘no comment’ mantra, listening to him spouting fiction after fiction, refuting the weight of evidence against him, and his tawdry attempts at trying to strike a deal. He would only feel satisfaction of a job well done if he heard his full confession. A contrite attitude would be a bonus, but he would happily forego it to know another senseless murder did not go unsolved.
He walked to the bin at the far corner of the park, a poor attempt to add some exercise into his day. Before the promotion, he would go out on raids, interview suspects, and spend time in surveillance cars; now, he rarely ventured out of the office. The volume of paperwork, meetings and presentations, plus the time taken to prepare for them, meant he couldn’t spare the time.
Walking through the gate at the far end of the square, he was conscious of someone coming up behind him. Most likely a runner about to brush past. He didn’t see, but felt the person make a move. Before he could turn around, he felt a blow to his head and his knees buckling.
TWENTY-SIX
Matt was two cars behind the white van as it passed through the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Opened in 1908, it was designed and built in an age when no one envisaged the volume of traffic that would pass through it now.
