by Graham Ison
‘You have my sympathy, madam. Apartment E in the first block is where Mr Cuyper lived.’ Hodgson pointed at a block that was about fifty yards from where he was standing. ‘It’s on the first floor.’
‘Thank you so much.’ The woman gave Hodgson a smile.
‘But how are you going to get in?’
‘I have a key,’ said the woman and, producing it from her shoulder bag, held it up.
‘That’s all right, then.’ Hodgson smiled and gave the woman a friendly wave of farewell.
However, his years of service in the Royal Military Police had honed his powers of observation and his innate awareness of when something wasn’t quite right. Although the woman spoke with a convincing foreign accent and had been extremely confident in her approach, he was not easily fooled. He was sure she was the subject of the photograph the police had given him. He dashed back into the lodge and dialled the number of Cuyper’s apartment.
‘Carpenter.’
‘There’s a woman on her way up, Sergeant,’ said Hodgson. ‘She gives the name of Doctor Saskia Cuyper and claims to be Cuyper’s widow. She gave me some sob story about coming back from the Congo; and although she sounded foreign, I’m not sure she is. That said, she’s a dead ringer for the woman in the photograph one of your blokes gave me a couple of days ago, despite having long Titian hair. Oh, and she’s got a key to the apartment.’
‘Thanks, Mark. Do me a favour and ring our incident room with that info, will you?’ Carpenter started to give him the number, but Hodgson interrupted.
‘It’s all right, Sarge, I’ve got a note of it.’
‘And perhaps after that you’d alert the local police.’
Detective Sergeant Liz Carpenter moved to a point where she would be behind the front door when it was opened. She directed Detective Constable John Appleby to stand in the kitchen area, ready to challenge the woman that the concierge had told her was on her way up to the apartment. Carpenter was in the right position to tackle the visitor, and restrain her if it became apparent that she was about to resist arrest.
There were a few tense moments while the two detectives awaited the arrival of the woman who might be Chantal Flaubert. Or might not. Then they heard a key in the lock. The front door swung open, and the woman walked confidently into the room.
‘I’m a police officer,’ said Appleby, his hand flicking back the skirt of his jacket and moving towards the revolver in his hip holster.
But the woman was faster. Her right hand was already holding an automatic pistol and with no compunction whatsoever she raised it and shot Appleby twice before he had a chance to draw his own weapon. He collapsed unconscious, his face becoming deathly pale within seconds.
Realizing that she had walked into a trap and sensing too late that the concierge had probably alerted the officer she’d just shot to her pending arrival, and might even have called other officers, she turned, intent on escaping.
But she found that Liz Carpenter, in a crouched stance, her revolver in a classic two-handed grip, was facing her. The woman again raised her pistol, but this time it was Carpenter who was the faster. Suddenly, two blows like a steam hammer hit the woman’s right shoulder, spun her round and toppled her so that she collapsed on the floor. Her pistol flew from her paralysed hand, skittering out of reach across the tiled section of the kitchen area, and her Titian wig fell off, revealing long black hair tightly pinned up.
Liz Carpenter picked up the pistol, then leaned over the woman who was now clutching her right shoulder and moaning loudly. ‘I’m an armed police officer,’ said Carpenter. ‘Put down your weapon or I’ll shoot. By the way, Chantal Flaubert, you’re nicked.’
Standing up, she took her mobile from her pocket and called an ambulance. ‘Two casualties with gunshot wounds,’ she told the control room. Next she called for police assistance, but already sirens could be heard approaching Cockcroft Lodge.
Instinct told me that it must be Chantal Flaubert who had asked for Cuyper’s apartment, and the moment that Mark Hodgson telephoned the incident room I summoned a traffic car to get Kate, Dave and me to North Sheen as fast as possible.
And they did. Traffic Unit drivers of the Metropolitan Police are the finest there are, but when they’re driving me I always get this overwhelming fear of sudden death. Mine! It’s about eight miles from Belgravia police station through the centre of London to North Sheen. Any sane person would take anything up to an hour to do the journey. The traffic guys got us there in eleven minutes.
When we arrived, the local police had already sealed off the entire Cockcroft Lodge estate. Tapes were in place and an incident officer was on post with the inevitable clipboard to record the comings and goings of interested parties.
Once we had identified ourselves, the three of us made our way to Cuyper’s apartment.
‘What’s the SP, Liz?’ I asked.
Liz Carpenter gave me a succinct account of everything that had occurred since receiving the phone call from Mark Hodgson. ‘She shot John Appleby the moment she walked through the door, and he doesn’t look to be in good shape. When Flaubert turned, I put two rounds into her right shoulder, so I doubt that she’ll be practising marksmanship any time soon. The paramedics summoned an air ambulance and John’s been airlifted to the Royal London, along with Flaubert. Local police accompanied them and they’ve undertaken to provide a guard on Flaubert until such time as we can set up a more permanent arrangement.’
‘You did a bloody good job, Liz. Are you feeling all right?’
‘Not really. It should have been me that faced Flaubert when she came in. Instead, I told Appleby to challenge her so that I could grab her from behind if the necessity arose, but she didn’t stop to talk, she just opened fire.’ Carpenter’s decision to deploy Appleby and herself in those positions was to haunt her for the rest of her life. ‘I just want to be in court when she goes down for a life-means-life sentence.’
‘I’ll get you taken back to the factory, Liz. Leave a short statement outlining your action today, and then go home.’
‘There’s one other thing, guv. My firearm needs to be zeroed. I aimed at the centre of that bloody woman’s body mass, but I was well off to the right. Twice!’
Now the whole machinery of investigation swung into action. The Professional Standards Department would be involved; and because a member of the public, albeit a woman wanted for triple murder, had been shot by a police officer, the matter would also be referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Just in case we’d infringed Flaubert’s human rights. The only person who would be delighted by the generation of acres of paper would be our beloved commander who, since the DAC’s intervention, had kept his head well below the parapet. But now he had a legitimate justification to become involved once again.
Linda Mitchell, our crime-scene manager, arrived together with her team of scientific investigators and set to work.
Detective Sergeant Tom Challis walked into the apartment. ‘I thought you might need some wheels, guv. I know the Black Rats brought you here, but they’ve done a runner. I’ve got a car outside whenever you’re good to go.’
‘Thanks, Tom. First port of call is the Royal London Hospital. I want to see how John Appleby is, and I also want to find out when Flaubert is likely to be fit enough to be interviewed.’
Leaving Challis to assist at the scene, Dave took the car keys and we went downstairs.
It was fourteen miles from Cockcroft Lodge to the Royal London, in Whitechapel, and after a tortuous drive through rush-hour traffic we arrived at the hospital just after five o’clock.
We were directed to an office and were immediately joined by a senior surgeon.
‘Chief Inspector Brock, is it?’
‘Yes, doctor, and this is Detective Sergeant Poole.’
The surgeon acknowledged Dave, then looked back at me, a grave expression on his face. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that your detective, John Appleby, died on the operating table, Chief Inspector. He’d
received two rounds straight to the heart. Even in cases like that there is sometimes a slender hope, but it was not to be so with your man. I’m very sorry, but we did our best.’
‘I’m sure you did, doctor,’ I said, ‘and thank you for your efforts. You also have Chantal Flaubert here.’
‘Yes, Chief Inspector. It was a through-and-through injury, but the collar bone was chipped and we operated to repair the damage. Nevertheless, the shoulder will still take some time to heal and she’ll never have the full use of her right arm again because there was also damage to the surrounding muscle tissue, nerves and ligaments. She’ll certainly need a long period of convalescence to recover fully from the injury.’
‘Where she’s going, she’ll have plenty of time to recuperate, doctor,’ said Dave.
The surgeon smiled. ‘Yes, I rather thought that would be the case.’
‘How soon will she be fit enough to be interviewed?’ I asked.
‘I would be inclined to leave it until Monday at the earliest, Chief Inspector,’ said the surgeon. ‘Unless you’re in a desperate hurry.’
‘Not really, doctor. She’s under arrest, so she won’t be going anywhere. Incidentally, there’ll be a constant police guard on her.’
The surgeon nodded. ‘It has happened before, Chief Inspector. We’re quite accustomed to accommodating the occasional villain. Which is why I suggested leaving the interview until Monday.’ He gave me a crooked smile. ‘You don’t want her counsel to suggest that she was still under the influence of anaesthetic when a statement was taken, do you?’
‘I can see you know a thing or two about this business, doctor.’
‘My wife’s a barrister,’ responded the surgeon.
As we returned to the reception area, a young woman came through the main entrance accompanied by Detective Inspector Len Driscoll.
‘This is Patricia Appleby, guv’nor,’ said Driscoll. ‘John’s wife. This is Detective Chief Inspector Brock, Mrs Appleby.’
‘Oh, you’re his boss, aren’t you, Mr Brock? How is John?’
Patricia Appleby was a pretty young woman whose face had a classical beauty about it, surrounded as it was by stylishly cut brown hair that was not quite shoulder length. Although she was dressed in jeans and a white sweater, she managed to look like a model. Perhaps she was, I thought. In fact, looking at her, I was sure that she was a model or perhaps an actress. John had never discussed his wife or shown us her photograph, and now I had met her, I didn’t blame him; coppers are a lecherous lot. The outcome was that none of us on the team knew anything about her, apart from the fact that she was a working wife, that the couple lived in Pinner, and that they had no children.
‘There’s a room just across the hall that I was told we can use, sir,’ said Dave. This time it wasn’t a sarcastic honorific. Apart from the fact that this was not a suitable occasion for irony, he always addressed me as ‘sir’ in the presence of the public.
I escorted Patricia Appleby into a room that was obviously set aside for such situations. There were a number of armchairs and, among other things, a water dispenser and several boxes of tissues.
‘What is it, Mr Brock? Is it serious?’ Patricia Appleby seemed to sense that the news would not be good, but she was about to learn that it was devastating.
‘I’m afraid they couldn’t save him, Mrs Appleby.’ There was no other way to say it. Telling members of the public that one of their nearest and dearest had been murdered was difficult enough. To tell the wife of a police officer that he had been murdered doing his duty was even harder.
‘Oh!’ Patricia Appleby sat down suddenly in one of the armchairs and stared at a picture on the opposite wall. There were no tears, no outward signs of grief, just a stoic fixation on the picture. Dave handed her the box of tissues, but she just shook her head. After some minutes, she looked up at me, an appealing expression on her face. ‘Would it be possible to speak to the surgeon?’
‘Is that a good idea, Patricia?’ I asked. ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling you Patricia.’
‘Not at all.’ Patricia’s response was quite calm. ‘I’d like to know exactly what procedures were undertaken. I’m a nursing sister, you see, and I understand these things.’
‘I didn’t know that, Patricia,’ I said, thinking to myself that despite all my years of experience in assessing people it’s still possible to get it wrong. I had been sure she was a model or an actress. ‘Dave, see what you can do, and perhaps you could get some coffee?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The same surgeon came very quickly, and Dave and I left him to explain to Patricia Appleby what he had done to try to save her husband.
Twenty minutes later, she emerged from the room, still dry-eyed and outwardly composed. In a matter of seconds in a luxury apartment in North Sheen two rounds from a pistol fired by a callous killer had completely changed Patricia Appleby’s life. For her, nothing would ever be the same again.
‘I’d like to go home now, Mr Brock,’ she said.
I signalled to Len Driscoll, who had been waiting in reception, and asked him to see Patricia Appleby home.
‘I’ve got a family support officer from Bromley standing by, guv,’ he said, ‘and local police will chase away the press.’
I now telephoned the DAC and told him of the latest turn of events, principally the death of John Appleby. The Commissioner would have to be informed immediately because it did not bode well for any of us in the chain of command if he learned of the death of an officer from the media. Or worse still, a telephone call from a journalist more interested than anything else in filing the story ahead of his competitors.
Naturally enough, my team was in a sombre mood when I returned to the incident room. The death of one of our own is the hardest thing for any of us to bear. Anger and a desire for revenge were the foremost natural reactions, followed by a feeling of utter impotence. There would be annoying little reminders that John Appleby was no longer there. A pay slip perhaps, a memo telling him to attend the next firearms refresher, or a note from the Traffic Branch asking for details of his renewed driving licence. The administrative machinery of the Metropolitan Police is like an oil tanker: it takes time for it to slow down before eventually stopping.
SEVENTEEN
It was common sense that I should be accompanied by a woman officer when I interviewed Chantal Flaubert, and I decided to take Kate. But I intended that Dave Poole should be there too. He was conversant with the wider picture of the investigation and could make a note of questions that needed to be asked, now or later.
It was going to be a tricky interview. I could not ask any questions about the murder of John Appleby because it was what the Americans would call a ‘slam dunk’. We were in the unique position of having a witness in the shape of DS Carpenter, and Flaubert would be charged with murder the moment she was fit enough.
What interested me more was the motive behind the killings of Cuyper, Downs and Ram Mookjai, and I intended to discover what that was all about. We didn’t have much in the way of evidence that Flaubert had murdered them, although I was certain she had. But assumption is not evidence. There were the fingerprints, of course, but she would probably have a plausible excuse for them being there. We also had the ballistics report proving that the pistol used to murder John Appleby had also been used to kill Cuyper, Downs and Mookjai. That evidence helped up to a point, but it didn’t tell us who had actually pulled the trigger on the first three occasions.
When we arrived at the hospital, we were shown to a private room outside which a middle-aged uniformed constable from Bethnal Green police station was seated.
‘Can I help you?’ The PC leaped to his feet as we approached, and stood in front of the door to bar any entrance, his hand hovering over his revolver holster. This copper obviously knew his job.
‘DCI Brock, DI Ebdon and DS Poole, all from HMCC.’ We produced our warrant cards and I was pleased to see that the PC inspected them closely.
‘Right you are,
sirs, ma’am. Can’t be too careful.’
‘I’m pleased to see it. Any unusual visitors attempted to gain access?’
‘No, sir.’ The PC tapped his revolver. ‘It’s what you’d call an unwise course of action if they did try,’ he added with a grin, and opened the door.
Chantal Flaubert was sitting up in bed reading a magazine. Her long black hair was loose and draped across her shoulders. DC Sheila Armitage, who was on the day shift, was seated nearby. She stood up as we entered.
‘Everything all right, Sheila?’ I asked.
‘Yes, sir. Miss Flaubert hasn’t said a word since she got back from the operating theatre.’
Chantal Flaubert looked up and grinned. ‘Why speak to the monkey when you know the organ grinder will turn up sooner or later?’ she said, and blew me a kiss.
Dave Poole set up the portable tape recorder that we used on occasions such as this, when an interview could not be conducted at a police station, and I announced who was present.
‘You are entitled to have a solicitor present,’ I said as Kate and I drew up chairs and seated ourselves close to the woman’s bed.
‘A fat lot of good that would do,’ snorted Flaubert.
‘May I take that as meaning you’re waiving your right to legal representation at this stage?’
‘You may, my dear Chief Inspector.’ She actually laughed at me. ‘In fact, at any stage.’
‘What is your real name? Is it Chantal Flaubert? Or is it Katherine Thompson?’ I asked.
‘It’s Chantal Flaubert in Belgium and Katherine Thompson over here,’ she said enigmatically, ‘but you can still call me Kat. No doubt you’ll have found out from the Belgian police that I was born in Knokke-le-Zoute and I’m thirty-two years of age. My father was Gaston Flaubert, a Walloon cabinetmaker, but my mother was English. Her name was Katherine Thompson, which I used as an alias. As a result, I speak French, Flemish and English. All fluently and with the accent appropriate to whichever language I’m speaking.’
