Short Shockers: Collection Two

by Peter James

  ‘He’s dodgy,’ Bill Stoker said. ‘Well dodgy.’

  ‘I sensed something. Couldn’t put my finger on it.’

  Stoker touched the tip of his nose. ‘Copper’s nose. You’ll develop it more as you get experience, old son. Follow your instincts and you won’t often go wrong. He’s been known to us for years, but no one’s ever pinned anything on him.’

  ‘Known for what?’

  ‘Handling.’

  ‘Stamps?’

  The DS shook his head. ‘High-end antiques. But anytime we ever tried to nick him, he could always produce receipts. He’s crafty, that one. I’ve talked to a few people who reckon he’s got away with everything but murder over the years. A lot of coppers would like to see him behind bars.’ He shrugged. ‘But doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, does it? And now he’s a sodding victim.’

  ‘Reckon that’s genuine?’

  He nodded. ‘Could see how upset the missus is. They’ve had the tables turned, all right. Mind you, you sodding deserve it if you leave a hundred grand’s worth of stamps under a bleeding mat, right?’

  Grace nodded thoughtfully, replaying the scene over in his mind. ‘The timing bothers me, sir – why do it at 5 a.m.? Why not earlier in the night?’

  ‘Police patrols get suspicious of vehicles out late at night. If the Cunninghams are correct and the villains broke in at 5 a.m., did their burgling, then made themselves some breakfast, it meant they were probably there a good hour or so. They’d have left around 6 a.m. perhaps, when people are starting to surface and be up and about. More vehicles on the road. Less suspicion. Nah, it’s an open-and-shut job. Let’s see if SOCO pick up any dabs.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘They’ll be there in the next half hour. We need to brief our press officer in the meantime. I’ll let you do it – be good practice.’

  *

  Shortly after 12.30 p.m., Tony Langiotti left his office, pulled his door shut behind him, a fresh cigarette dangling from his lips, and sauntered out into the bright sunshine. He was in a sunny mood, looking forward to a nice pint or two and a bite to eat in the pub with a couple of mates.

  He’d already made a deal this morning to offload the Georgian silver haul from last night, for a very tasty price indeed! The clock wasn’t proving quite so easy and he wished the tossers hadn’t bothered nicking it – the value was peanuts compared to the rest of the items. But he knew someone who would take it off his hands when he returned from a holiday in Spain later in the week.

  He climbed into his large Jaguar, started the engine, and drove up to the Old Shoreham Road. A short distance on he halted at a red traffic light. As he waited for it to change, he glanced idly towards the parade of shops on his left; suddenly, the banner headline of The Argus newspaper, outside a newsagent’s, caught his eye.

  Instantly, his mood darkened. Violently. It was too coincidental to be a different house.

  ‘What?’ he said aloud. ‘What?’ he repeated. ‘What the f – ?’

  £100,000 STAMP HAUL IN EXCLUSIVE HOVE MANSION RAID.

  Ignoring that the lights had changed to green, and the hooting from behind, he sat and stared in disbelief for several moments. Then he jumped out, gave two fingers to the driver of the car behind, ran into the newsagent’s and grabbed a copy of the paper. He paid for it, then stood rooted to the spot reading it, ignoring the hooting outside from the obstruction his car was causing.

  Thieves broke into a Dyke Road Avenue mansion early this morning and made off with a haul that included Georgian silver, valued at over £50,000, and a prized stamp collection, worth an estimated £100,000.

  The house’s owner, retired Brighton businessman Dennis Cunningham, said to The Argus earlier this morning, ‘They clearly knew exactly what they were looking for. They only targeted our finest Georgian silver – and my stamps. And the cheek of them!’ he added, indignantly. ‘They helped themselves to breakfast while my wife and I were asleep upstairs!’

  Detective Constable Roy Grace, in charge of the investigation, said, ‘We are pursuing a number of lines of enquiry, and will make every effort to apprehend those responsible and recover the valuables, many of which are of great sentimental value to their rightful owners.

  ‘If any member of the public saw anything suspicious in the Dyke Road Avenue area between the hours of 4 a.m. and 7 a.m., please call Detective Constable Roy Grace at Brighton CID on the following number . . .’

  Langiotti stormed out of the newsagent, jumped into his car, lit another cigarette to calm himself down, then accelerated away, his lunchtime plans out of the window, anger coursing through his veins.

  ‘Bastards,’ he said. ‘You jammy little Welsh bastards. Think you’re going to get away with cheating me out of a hundred grand? Well, boyos, you’ve got another thing coming.’

  *

  In the CID office at John Street police station, Roy Grace was hunched over his desk, an untouched sandwich beside him and a forgotten mug of coffee gone cold. He was concentrating hard, determined to impress Detective Sergeant Stoker with his work on this case. And he knew he was going to impress one person today – his beloved Sandy. The noon edition of The Argus lay beside him; it was the first time he had ever seen his name in print, and he was chuffed to bits. He could not wait to show it to her this evening.

  In his notebook he wrote:

  Look for similar modus operandi.

  House-to-house enquiries.

  Newsagents.

  Stop all vehicles in Dyke Road Avenue during that time period tomorrow and ask if they saw anything.

  Check all antique shops and stalls in Brighton regularly over coming weeks.

  Check local and national stamp dealers for items they have been offered.

  He was interrupted in mid-flow by his phone ringing. ‘DC Grace,’ he answered. ‘Brighton CID.’

  ‘I’m phoning about the Dyke Road Avenue robbery this morning,’ the male voice at the other end said, in a coarse Brighton accent.

  Eagerly, Grace picked up his pen. ‘May I have your name and phone number, sir?’

  ‘You may not. But I’ve got inside information, see. There’s going to be another burglary tonight. 111 Tongdean Avenue, a house called The Gallops.’

  Grace knew his home town well. This was considered by some to be an even smarter street than Dyke Road Avenue. ‘How do you know that, sir?’

  ‘Just trust me, I know. They’ll be going in around 5 a.m., and coming out soon after 6 a.m., disguised as postmen. Couple of Welshmen, from Cardiff.’

  Any moment there was going to be a catch; Grace pressed on his questions, whilst waiting for it. Probably a demand for money.

  ‘Can you give me their names, sir?’

  ‘Dai Lewellyn and Rees Hughes.’

  He wrote the names on the pad. ‘May I ask why you are giving me this information?’

  ‘Tell ’em they shouldn’t have been so greedy with the stamps.’

  There was a click. The man had hung up.

  Grace thought for some moments, feeling a buzz of excitement. If . . . if . . . if this tip-off was real, then he had a real chance to shine! Even better if he could catch the perps red-handed. But it could of course have been a crank call. He phoned the operator and asked for a trace on it, then he looked up the number of Cardiff’s main police station, called it, and asked to speak to the CID there. The duty detective was out at lunch, but Grace was told he would call back on his return.

  A short while later the operator called to tell him the call had been made, as he had suspected, from a phone booth. She gave him the address of the booth, in a busy street near the Brighton & Hove Albion football stadium. Grace thanked her and immediately contacted the SOCO officer who had just finished at the Cunninghams’ house, asking him to get straight over to the phone box and take some prints from that – although Grace doubted whether whoever had made the call would have been dumb enough to have left any prints anywhere in the booth.

  Then he hurried across the room to Bill Stoker’s tiny office,
which was largely decorated with photographs of him in his former life as a professional boxer, and told him the developments.

  ‘Probably a crank,’ was the Detective Sergeant’s first reaction.

  ‘He was very specific.’

  ‘Let’s wait and see if Cardiff Police come back with anything on these two Taffies.’

  An hour later, Grace received a call from Detective Constable Gareth Brangwen of the South Wales Constabulary. Before getting down to business he asked whether Grace was a football or a rugby man. ‘I’m a rugby man, sir,’ he said, ‘Out of preference.’

  ‘Good man!’ he said. ‘We’re going to get along fine, you and I! Now, what’s this about two of our undesirables over on your manor?’

  The young DC gave him, as briefly as he could, the facts.

  ‘Well, we do have a Dai Lewellyn and Rees Hughes well known to us. They come from the same estate and they’ve given us plenty of trouble over the years. Housebreaking is their speciality, if you want to call it that. Both of them have form – they were last released from prison six months ago.’

  Grace thanked him, hardly able to wait to give Bill Stoker the news.

  *

  There were several cars parked along both sides of Tongdean Avenue, so another one, a large plain Vauxhall, did not look out of place. Taking no chances, Roy Grace and another DC colleague, Jon Carlton, had arrived shortly before midnight for the stake-out.

  They were parked across the road, a safe distance back from The Gallops, number 111, the target house. A quarter of a mile away, down a side street, other officers waited in an unmarked van. A second unmarked car, with two police officers seated inside, was parked in the street near the rear of the property. No one could go in or out without being seen from one of the roads.

  There were to be no breaks, and no one leaving or entering any of the vehicles. If anyone, including Grace and Carlton, needed to urinate for the rest of the night, they’d have to do it into plastic jars, which they had with them.

  One of the biggest decisions that had been made, fortunately by his superiors – so there would be no comeback on him at least – was not to inform the owners of The Gallops. The news would undoubtedly worry, if not downright terrify them. There would be no telling how the owners might react – perhaps by keeping the lights on all night long, which could blow the police’s chances of an arrest. The plan was to seize the perpetrators as they attempted to enter the house.

  Grace was nervous as hell – so much was riding on this. Would they turn up, or would he have wasted hours of time for eight officers, and DS Stoker, who had also sacrificed his night’s sleep to be on standby for him? He’d have a very red face if there was a no-show, or if it all went, as Bill Stoker had charmingly put it, tits-up.

  Grace wondered if he was noticing a pattern. The Gallops, which he had driven past in daylight earlier, was one of the largest houses in this street, but – like the Cunninghams’ house – one of the ones in poorest repair, and there was no burglar alarm box on the wall. There were also no gates to the entrance or exit of the in-and-out driveway.

  His colleague was an experienced and chatty DC, who was hoping to move across to Major Crime work, which included all homicides. High-profile murder cases were the best jobs, the Gucci jobs, he told Roy Grace over several cigarettes, which they smoked cupped in their hands to conceal the glow in case their quarry approached unseen, and sickly sweet coffee that was becoming progressively more lukewarm. They were also the cases that got you noticed by your superiors, and which helped your promotion chances.

  As the night wore on, it wasn’t promotion that was Grace’s worry, it was his growing fear of a no-show. Had he been sold a pup? Been naive in believing a crank caller?

  But the names of the two Welshmen had checked out, hadn’t they? If it had been a crank call, whoever had made it had gone to a lot of trouble.

  At a few minutes past five, DC Carlton yawned. ‘What time are you reckoning on calling it a day?’

  The sky was lightening a fraction, Grace thought, and a few tiny streaks of grey and red were appearing. He felt tired, and shaky from too much coffee. He munched a Kit Kat chocolate bar, sharing it with Carlton. Then, just as he bit on the last morsel, both men stiffened.

  Headlights appeared.

  A white van drove slowly past them, with what looked like two men in the front. All the cars parked on this street, and on the driveways of the homes, were modern; this Vauxhall they were in was one of the cheapest, but it was inconspicuous. The van stuck out instantly. The vehicle was wrong for the street – certainly at this hour.

  Grace radioed in. ‘Charlie Victor, Tango One approaching Tango Two.’

  But the van carried on going and Grace’s heart sank. Then it turned around and came back, and pulled into a space less than a hundred yards in front of them. Two men climbed out. In the glow of a street light he could see they were dressed as postmen, carrying what looked like empty mail sacks. They looked furtively around at the seemingly deserted street, then scurried across the road, hurried along the pavement and down the driveway.

  ‘Now,’ he radioed urgently. ‘Tango One on scene. Charlie Victor going in. Unit Two, move forward!’

  Grace signalled to his colleague to wait for a few more seconds, pulled his torch out of the glove compartment without switching it on, then as quietly as they could, they slipped out of the car and hurried across the road. The driveway of The Gallops was tarmac, and on their rubber-soled shoes they made little noise as they hurried around the side of the house. Then they stopped.

  Right in front of them, barely twenty feet ahead, they saw the silhouettes of the two men. Then they heard a tinkle of glass. In the distance, Grace heard the roar of an engine being revved hard. He snapped on his torch, lighting up their startled faces, and yelled, ‘Police, don’t move!’ as both officers sprinted forwards.

  ‘Shite!’ One of the thieves shouted, dropping his tools and making a run for it across the lawn. Grace broke away to the right, sprinting hard to try to cut him off. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the other trying to climb the wall into the neighbour’s garden and being dragged back down by Carlton. But all his focus was on the sprinting man ahead of him. Gripping his torch, the beam jigging everywhere, Grace was gaining on him on the damp grass. Gaining. Then suddenly his quarry appeared to trip and plunge forward in the darkness. An instant later, as the ground gave way beneath him, he realized why.

  For an instant he swayed wildly, then fell forward too, the torch rolling away from him onto the soft, tensioned cover of the swimming pool. He reached forward and grabbed an ankle, as the thief attempted to scramble away. Grace clung to it, as the Welshman kicked hard and swore, then moments later he broke free, leaving Grace floundering on the material, now sodden with chlorinated water, holding a trainer in his hand. He lurched to his feet, and stumbled forward through ankle-deep water, radioing for assistance.

  Ahead he saw the Welshman haul himself back onto terra firma and sprint towards the end of the garden. Not bothering to pick up his torch, Grace sprinted on after him. Suddenly, appearing to change his mind, the thief turned and ran back towards the house, and seconds later was lit up by the beams of three different torches. He stopped in his tracks. Before he knew it he was face down on the ground, with two officers on top of him.

  ‘Out for an early morning stroll are we, sunshine?’ said one.

  ‘Bit careless forgetting a shoe when you got dressed, wasn’t it?’ said the other. ‘Got any mail for us then?’

  *

  Back at the police station, ignoring his Sergeant’s advice to go home and get some dry clothes and some kip, Grace insisted on going down into the custody block in the basement. Dai Lewellyn and Rees Hughes had been read their rights, and were now locked in separate cells, still dressed as postmen, waiting for a duty Legal Aid solicitor to arrive.

  Grace, his tie awry, his clothes sodden, walked through the custody centre in the basement of the police station and peered thro
ugh one of the cell doors. ‘Got everything you need?’

  Lewellyn looked at him sullenly. ‘So, how did you know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘You know what I mean. You knew we were coming, didn’t you? Someone grassed us up, didn’t they?’

  Grace raised his eyebrows. ‘A little bird told me you shouldn’t have been so greedy with the stamps. That mean anything?’

  ‘Stamps?’ Lewellyn said. ‘What do you mean, stamps? We didn’t have no stamps. You mean, like in postage stamps?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. We didn’t take no stamps. Why would we take stamps? I don’t know nothing about no stamps.’

  ‘But you and your mate know all about Georgian silver?’ Grace asked.

  Lewellyn was silent for some moments. ‘We might,’ he said finally. ‘But not stamps.’ He was emphatic.

  ‘Someone thinks you’ve been greedy over stamps.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Lewellyn said. ‘Who?’

  ‘A man who knows where you were yesterday and what you took.’

  ‘There’s only one bastard who knows where we was,’ he said, even more emphatically.

  Roy Grace listened attentively.

  *

  The next two hours were taken up with formal interviews with the two men. In the end they admitted the burglary, but continued to deny any involvement with stamps, and indeed any knowledge of them.

  Finally, shortly before 10 a.m., still in his damp clothes, with a search warrant signed by a local magistrate in his hand, along with the inventory folder and photographs of the valuables taken and a fresh team of officers, Grace arrived at West Southwick Mews. Their pissed-off co-operative Welsh prisoners had kindly supplied them with the exact address.

  One officer broke the door down with the yellow battering ram, and they entered, found the switch and turned the lights on.

  They were in a huge space, eight garages wide, and almost empty, bar a row of trestle tables – and what looked to Grace like a rather ugly antique clock.

  Five minutes later, Tony Langiotti arrived for the start of his day, in his Jaguar, cigarette as ever dangling between his lips. As he drove into the mews and saw the police officers, he stamped on the brakes, and frantically threw the gear shift into reverse. But before he could touch the accelerator a police car appeared from nowhere, completely blocking off the exit behind him.