by Nick Oldham
‘OK, have it your way.’ Henry stepped back. ‘It’s just that I’m the guy who might just save you from going to prison for the rest of your shitty life. Your move, mate.’
The dog was manoeuvred into the kitchen and locked away.
In the lounge, Daniels waited for Melissa to return, which she did.
Daniels had not taken a seat.
Instead, she hovered by the window, feeling slightly annoyed for some reason, thinking this could just be a waste of time.
‘What’s this about?’ she asked Melissa.
‘I wasn’t entirely honest with you before.’
‘I’d never have guessed.’
Melissa ignored the sarcastic jibe. ‘I want to tell the truth.’
Daniels heard movement in the hallway. ‘Which is?’
‘You said you thought Tom Salter was probably seeing someone.’
Daniels nodded.
‘Well, not me. I’m not, never have been or wanted to be his bit on the side,’ she said. Daniels waited, then Melissa called out, ‘Miriam! Come in now, please.’
The living-room door opened slowly and a woman a little younger entered, a little prettier, a little slimmer, yet very similar to Melissa, who said, ‘This is my sister. She needs to talk to you.’
Miriam wasn’t the only person to enter the room. Behind her came a devastatingly beautiful young girl, maybe fifteen years old, Daniels guessed, with high cheekbones and searing brown eyes that astounded the detective.
‘Who’s this?’ Daniels asked.
Melissa said, ‘This is Amira and she’s an illegal immigrant. Tom Salter believed he saved her life but, in so doing, lost his.’
There was no doubt in Henry Christie’s mind that Jamie Milner could be a very dangerous individual, capable of inflicting pain on anyone. He was a fit-looking young man, obviously worked out in a gym and could probably have strangled Henry in about thirty seconds.
Henry had done a quick check on Milner’s previous convictions – all mainly from his youth, all involving separating people forcibly from their money; more recently, he had a conviction for an armed robbery where a shotgun was discharged, injuring a security guard, though not seriously. He was also suspected of involvement in robberies up and down the country and was on the National Crime Agency’s radar, but nothing could be proved against him. He was definitely a professional crim.
Henry was unfazed and unintimidated by him.
He enjoyed looking across interview-room tables at bad people.
Defiantly and with a smug grin on his face, Milner folded a couple of chips into his mouth.
‘Tell me about the gun,’ Henry said.
‘What gun?’
‘The one the police found under your shed.’
‘I thought I didn’t need a brief?’
‘You don’t. Entirely off the record, this one.’ He pointed to the tape machine, which was empty, then up to the walls, on which there were no cameras. ‘Nothing said here can be used as evidence against you.’
Milner did not look impressed. He snorted in disbelief.
‘I’m here to help you, but I can only do so if you are open and honest with me, two concepts which I realize are probably alien to you.’
Milner swigged a mouthful of sweet tea. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
Henry explained patiently, then said, ‘The gun.’
‘Not mine. Never seen it before in my life. You know about me – you know I’m a sawn-off kinda guy.’
‘It wouldn’t be a surprise to discover you used a pistol, though.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Did you kill Tom Salter?’
Milner sighed tetchily. ‘I rob vans moving cash about.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘No, I didn’t. I don’t just kill people. In fact, I’ve never killed anyone, and I don’t intend to start.’
‘The detectives here seem to think you did.’
‘And by pure coincidence, they find what I bet turns out to be the murder weapon under my shed. Under my shed, for fuck’s sake!’
‘I’ve found guns hidden in worse places. Most villains haven’t got a lot of imagination. I once found a revolver in a biscuit tin. You are a proper villain, aren’t you? But I’ll lay odds you don’t have much imagination.’
‘Two things.’ Milner leaned over his plate. ‘One, yeah, I’m a villain. Two, I don’t shit on my own doorstep.’
‘You would say that. You need to do better, otherwise you’ll end up being convicted of a murder, and frankly you’re not helping yourself here. You need to think very carefully about where you were on the night of this killing and come up with a real alibi, otherwise you’ll go down for life.’
They moved to the dining room at the back of the house, overlooking a well-tended garden with a sweeping lawn, down to what Daniels thought was a tacky water feature.
At the table, Daniels said, ‘What do you have to tell me?’
The young girl sat there primly, her slim fingers interlocked on her lap. She wore a simple dress, showing her long legs.
Melissa, the older sister, looked sternly at Miriam. ‘Tell her,’ she ordered. ‘We need to get this behind us.’
Miriam’s eyes were wet and bloodshot from crying. The conflict and fear inside her were visible externally too. She was screwed up as tight as a dishcloth being wrung out.
Daniels saw the pain. ‘Tell me,’ she said softly, then prompted, ‘were you seeing Tom Salter?’
Numbly, Miriam nodded.
‘I’ll take my chances,’ Milner said stubbornly. ‘That fuckin’ gun’s not mine, I have no idea who, what’s he called, Tom Salter, is or was. I’ve never met the guy and I certainly didn’t plug him with bullets. You won’t find any evidence of me ever having handled that gun, not in a million years.’
‘I admire your confidence.’
‘I don’t admire you trying to sneak a confession out of me.’ His eyes roved the room. ‘Not being recorded? Bull!’
Henry hadn’t expected this to be straightforward. Dealing with a professional villain’s inherent mistrust of the cops was always difficult.
‘I did watch you being interviewed earlier,’ Henry said. ‘When DCI Runcie started talking, your body language told me a few things.’
‘You going to psychoanalyse me now?’
‘Maybe. I saw you go from being worried – when she put the allegation to you – to being confident because you knew that when she went into detail she was barking up the wrong tree.’
‘Very perceptive for a cop.’
‘But just knowing you didn’t do it is one thing; proving you didn’t is entirely another matter. Me seeing your body language doesn’t prove a thing. The only thing that proves anything is hard evidence, Jamie. You haven’t got any in your favour at this moment and I very much doubt you ever will.’
‘Girlfriend, alibi,’ he said.
‘They’ll speak to her before you do and run rings round her.’
Milner’s eyes narrowed. ‘Just what is your game?’
‘I’m not playing a game. I don’t play games where murder and murderers are concerned. I’m just telling you that if you don’t come up with something very quickly there’s a chance you won’t even make bail. They might be so sure that gun is the murder weapon that you’ll get charged and put before court in the morning, and never see the true light of day other than above a prison exercise yard for what, minimum fifteen years. Maybe twenty. You could be seen as a menace to society.’
‘He was going to leave his wife. The marriage was over,’ Miriam said through her tears, and Daniels wondered how many million times that line had been spun. However, she nodded sympathetically, encouraging Miriam to continue.
The young girl, Amira, sat immoveable, hands still clasped.
‘We’d spent most of that day together.’ She glanced at Daniels. ‘Slept together. Spent time, y’know?’
‘OK.’
‘Eventually he picked up his phones and left for
a meeting and I never saw him again.’
Melissa had made a mug of tea for each of them. Miriam picked up hers with dithering hands and took a sip.
‘Who was he meeting?’
Placing the mug down, Miriam then dragged her fingers across her face, stretching her pretty features. She looked beyond exhausted, Daniels guessed by the burden she had been carrying around in her head for the last six months. Daniels glanced at the young girl, wondering how she fitted into this picture.
‘The people who killed him.’
‘Who are these people?’
‘I don’t know. I just know they are dangerous and I think cops are involved. He even mentioned the New York underworld.’
‘Had Tom crossed them or something?’
‘Not really. I don’t think so. He’d got involved … been involved for a while, but then he wanted out, couldn’t handle it.’
‘Handle what?’
‘The violence, but mainly the suffering caused.’ Miriam looked at the girl. ‘She’s the one who changed him, just like that. He wasn’t really a bad man, just a bit of a rogue, got into money problems and problems with the cops and chose the wrong people to get involved with.’
‘I ask you again: who were they? I need names, Miriam.’
‘I don’t know. He never told me, just said they were connected … whatever that means.’
‘OK, so you were with him all day and then he went out to meet these people. Presumably his office was the meeting venue?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘So he met his killers in his office. It wasn’t just burglars or someone like that who stumbled across him?’
She shook her head.
Daniels looked at the young girl again. ‘And how is Amira involved in all this?’
Miriam swallowed and closed her eyes desperately. ‘She’s one of the girls Tom brought into this country using his haulage firm.’
Daniels tensed up. ‘He was a people trafficker?’
Miriam nodded. ‘He needed the money. He knew it was wrong – that’s why he had to give it up. When he saw Amira he knew he couldn’t do it any more. He saved her and allowed all the others he’d brought over on the run to go. It lost the people he worked for a lot of money. I think that was why he was killed. I took Amira under my wing and looked after her. She has no papers, nothing.’ She paused. ‘There was other stuff, too … Big scams going on, and someone was murdered, a man in a car, stabbed to death.’
Milner walked ahead of Henry along the cell corridor. The prisoner had said hardly anything since Henry had speculated on the length of a jail sentence. Now Henry was putting him back in his cell, unable to decide if he was Tom Salter’s killer or not. Maybe he was. Maybe he was just doing what many crims did: lie and deny. Maybe he had not thought deeply enough about where to hide the gun. Just another dim felon, not quite as smart as he thought.
Milner’s cell door was open. ‘In you go,’ Henry said.
The prisoner stopped abruptly and turned to Henry, who thought, I hope he doesn’t hit me. I can do without another tussle.
Milner said, ‘Are you on the level?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You honest?’
Henry considered a quip. Instead he said seriously, ‘Yes, I am.’
‘You think I’ll go to prison for this?’
‘Every chance. I suppose it could be reduced to manslaughter, but even so, that comes with a mandatory life sentence.’
‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t fucking do it. I am a villain – I get my kicks and cash from it, but I didn’t do it.’
Henry regarded him and shrugged.
‘I was somewhere else on that day.’
‘Can you prove that?’
‘Only if I admit to it.’
‘Admit to what?’
‘Check your crime reports – New Cross, London, near a Travelodge. I was robbing a cash delivery van outside a Barclays Bank. Me an’ another guy. I won’t tell you who.’
‘Go on.’
‘I fired me shotgun just to scare the crap outta the guards. Didn’t hit anyone. Got away with the best part of a hundred grand.’ He stopped. ‘It were the morning the guy Salter got shot, so I couldn’t physically have been there and you can go into my phone records, I suppose. They’ll put me in the Smoke the day before.’
‘Go on. So far you’ve proved nothing.’
‘I can tell you where the sawn-off’s hidden, and me gear and me mask – in a hole under the shed, so you guys even missed that.’
PS Calder was at the desk in the custody office when Henry emerged from the cells. She watched him warily.
‘Milner’s back in his cell,’ he informed her. ‘Let me put an entry on the record.’
Calder spun the open file around and Henry, trying to keep his hand from dithering with excitement, wrote up his entry concerning Milner, keeping it vague but truthful. Then he looked steadily at Calder. ‘The prisoner, Sowerbutts? When he was released from custody, he was OK, yeah?’
‘I think I’ve already told you that, boss.’
‘He was in cell six, wing two, wasn’t he?’
She nodded.
‘How many prisoners have been in that cell since?’
‘Er, don’t know. None, I don’t think. It’s kind of an overflow wing. We don’t generally use it unless we get really busy and full. It’s the furthest away from here.’
‘How inconvenient,’ Henry said, meaning, How convenient. Then he gave a curt nod and went back into the cell complex, down into wing two, cell six, unoccupied still from his last look round. He stood on the threshold now with fresh eyes, his nostrils dilating as he thought through his next moves. In respect of Sowerbutts, the first thing to do was close the cell door and declare the cell as a crime scene, not to be interfered with. There would be nothing lost in doing this if, as he suspected, Sowerbutts left the cell possibly having been assaulted in it, even though it had been mopped clean. There would still be plenty of blood traces to find by any competent CSI or forensic investigator. He pushed the door closed, except that it would not shut because the lock had been left in the ‘locked’ position, with the bolt sticking out. He got this. Unoccupied cells were often left this way so that there was less chance of a member of staff being accidentally locked inside.
He needed the key which he had returned to Calder.
He went back to the custody office, but Calder was nowhere to be seen.
She had gone down to visit a prisoner down the main cell corridor, which is where Henry bumped into her. He told her to follow him to wing two.
She did, with a perplexed, worried expression on her face.
At the entrance to cell six, he turned to her. ‘I want this cell locked and kept locked,’ he told her.
‘Why’s that, boss?’
‘Because it’s now a crime scene.’
‘Eh?’ She had the cell keys in her hand.
‘No one goes in it without my say-so. The next person in it will be a CSI who will be accompanied by me, Sarge. Understand? Say, “Yes, boss.”’
‘Yes, boss.’
She inserted the key and drew back the bolt.
Henry’s jaw rotated as he kept thinking about his moves. He leaned in and took one last glance around the cell. He was just about to step away as the door began to close.
He glanced at Calder. She now had a look of grim determination on her face and, before Henry could react – he knew what was coming and, even in that flash of a moment, kicked himself – she pushed him hard into the cell. He stumbled in, off balance, and she slammed the door and suddenly Henry was the one in custody.
On the wall outside she disabled the emergency call button and drew out a coin from her pocket. It was a two-pence piece with a tiny blob of Blu-Tack on one side, which she pressed into the peephole with her thumb.
She walked swiftly away, hearing the pounding of Henry’s fists and feet on the cell door, and the muted sound of his shouts.
Daniels listened
to the story told by Miriam of an affair and the man she loved embroiled in a situation from which he was futilely trying to extract himself. Of scams involving hugely expensive heavy plant such as excavators, crushers and screeners, of running illegal immigrants through Portsea docks and of the toll of it all weighing heavily on Tom Salter.
‘I don’t know the ins and outs of it,’ she insisted (even though Daniels suspected she knew much more than she was divulging and would need a real serious interview). ‘I just know bits of it – snippets – and can only piece them together.’
‘I get it,’ Daniels said. ‘Look, me, you and this young lady need to spend quite some time together.’ She smiled at Amira, who, in halting English, had told her some of the horrors she had endured in a bid for supposed freedom in the UK. She’d been raped and beaten – and it seemed that Tom Salter had seen all this by just looking into her eyes, and he’d stepped in and saved her from the rest of her life, for which she would be forever grateful. ‘We need to get somewhere safe and secure and really talk about things. I will need statements from you both.’
‘I understand,’ Miriam said.
Daniels was already thinking that these two females should be taken over to Lancashire and housed at the constabulary training centre, where they would be safe. ‘I need to call my boss first.’ She stood up and went to the front door into the garden. Her hand was shaking as she speed-dialled Henry’s number and waited for the connection. Frustratingly, it went straight to voicemail. She shook her phone crossly, tried again and got the same result.
‘Bugger.’
Back in the house, the three women were sitting subdued around the dining-room table.
‘I can’t get through to him,’ Daniels explained. She was about to tell them to hold tight while she went to get Henry – until something dawned on her in a flash. She stopped talking and looked at Miriam.
‘You said something to me earlier, about when you last saw Tom that day, when he left you.’
Miriam waited.
‘Unless I misheard, you told me he took his phones with him. Phones, not phone. Did he have more than one mobile phone?’
‘Yes, he always had two – one work, one personal – which I don’t think his wife knew about.’
‘So when he contacted you he used his personal one?’
