Murder Ring (A DI Geraldine Steel Mystery)

by Leigh Russell

  ‘No I never,’ Lenny burst out. ‘I never mugged no one and that’s God’s truth.’

  He was scared now. His hazel eyes were stretched wide and his face looked pale. He looked sideways at his lawyer in a silent plea, but the other man kept his eyes fixed on Geraldine, waiting calmly to hear what she would say next. For an instant, Geraldine felt a flicker of loathing for the complacent young lawyer. It wasn’t his head in the noose. But he was only doing his job, just as she was. She turned her attention back to Lenny.

  ‘Only for some reason that you can’t remember, you shot him in the chest at close range. What happened, Lenny? Were you waving the gun at him to scare him and it went off by accident? If you cooperate with us, your clever lawyer there can make a case that this was manslaughter, and you’ll be out in four years, possibly less. It all depends on you. You can make things worse for yourself by deliberately concealing evidence, especially if you’ve attempted to dispose of it. So if the shooting was an accident and not premeditated murder, you need to tell us now.’

  Lenny dropped his head in his hands and refused to respond.

  ‘I need to speak to my client,’ the lawyer said quietly.

  Geraldine terminated the interview.

  ‘Bastard lawyer knew he’d cave in,’ Sam fumed, as they watched Lenny being escorted down the corridor. ‘If only we’d had a few more minutes with him we might’ve broken him. Now that bloody lawyer’s going to coach him. Bugger.’

  Geraldine still wasn’t entirely convinced they had the right man.

  ‘He seems so ineffective,’ was all she could say in an attempt to explain her reservations to her colleague.

  ‘Ineffective, useless waste of space and a murderer. OK, I grant you it probably wasn’t premeditated, but he was still running around the streets, out of control, with a gun in his possession. In some ways, the fact that he picked on a victim at random makes it even worse.’

  ‘The problem is that all we have against Lenny is circumstantial,’ Geraldine said. ‘Unless he talks, we can’t be sure it was him. He might have just been passing by and somehow got caught up in all this. Yes, I know it sounds unlikely, but it’s possible. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Let’s hope the jury sees what’s right under their noses. He’s only just come out of prison.’

  ‘For burglary, but never for a firearms offence. This doesn’t fit his profile. And there are other questions, like where he got hold of a gun as soon as he left prison, and what happened to David’s leather jacket?’

  Sam shook her head. ‘You can play devil’s advocate all you like, but obviously you think Lenny’s guilty, and you must have been pretty sure he was armed when we went to pick him up. Otherwise, how could you justify taking an armed response unit, and a helicopter, and all the rest of it, to the lock-up? You’d never have authorised all that if you really thought Lenny was unarmed.’

  It was a fair point. Geraldine had stuck her neck out, employing such costly resources to apprehend one man. Unless she had suspected he was armed, she could not possibly justify the expense. She shrugged, resolving to keep her reservations to herself. Adam was already questioning her actions. She had to hold her nerve and defend her decision as robustly as possible.

  ‘We can’t be sure,’ she said, ‘but I had to entertain the possibility he was guilty and armed. Let’s just hope he confesses. It would make our lives a whole lot easier.’

  She tried to ignore her qualms, but she was not actually convinced they had the right man. And if Lenny was innocent, while they were wasting time interviewing him, they were giving the real killer time to cover his tracks.

  27

  AFTER A BREAK they tried again. Geraldine hoped a few hours in a cell might loosen Lenny’s tongue. He didn’t strike her as a strong character, even with a solicitor at his side to guide his responses. At the very least, the cell would have reminded him of his recent stretch in prison, making him vulnerable.

  ‘Are we making you comfortable?’

  ‘At least I can sleep at night. How do you manage, knowing you get innocent people locked up just so’s you get to keep your job.’

  ‘Bring back memories, did it?’ Sam chipped in. ‘Plenty more of that where you’re headed.’

  ‘If you don’t cooperate,’ Geraldine added.

  ‘You’ll have me banged up whatever I say. I know how this works. You’re after a conviction, another box ticked, another target hit. Never mind I’m an innocent man. I been done before so I’m easy pickings. Who’s the jury going to believe, police inspector or ex-con? It’s all wrong. I done my time. There ain’t nothing to put me back inside, only you decide to go after me and here I am, banged up again. Some fucking justice system we got. You’re a load of perverts. Guilty once, guilty for any other crime you got. The prison’s full of poor sods like me what got caught once and never let off again. Why bother with all this? No lawyer’s going to get me off. Once the judge knows my form, I’ll be done for.’

  Geraldine reminded Lenny that previous convictions were not disclosed to a jury. ‘Like you said, you’ve done your time.’

  ‘So what the fuck am I doing here, talking to you?’

  Geraldine went through the evidence that placed Lenny at the scene of the shooting in Wells Mews.

  ‘So I walked past. So what? So did a lot of other people in London that evening. Don’t mean I done nothing.’

  ‘You can’t convict a man for being in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ the lawyer chimed in.

  ‘The wrong time in this case was when a man was shot,’ Sam said.

  Lenny glanced at his lawyer who gave a nod. Lenny sat forward and stared at Geraldine. ‘OK, I’ll come clean. I’ll tell you what happened, what I was doing there and what I done. I’ll tell you the lot, every bit of it. You got to believe me this is God’s own truth, so help me, and not a word of a lie. I’ll swear it on the Bible.’

  ‘You can do that in court,’ Sam said.

  ‘I swear it on my own mother’s life.’

  Geraldine frowned at Sam to keep quiet and turned her attention back to Lenny.

  He cleared his throat. ‘This is what happened then. This is exactly what I done. I’m telling you the honest truth now.’

  At her side, Geraldine heard Sam heave an exaggerated sigh. Ignoring the sergeant, she kept her eyes fixed on Lenny.

  ‘I come out the bird, right? They give you a wad when you leave, supposed to get you back on your feet a bit. Fine if you got more stashed away, but if that’s all you got you’re fucked. So I use the travel warrant to get me up to London.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just go home?’ Sam asked.

  Lenny glanced at his brief before answering. ‘Look, I just come out the nick, right? I been in eighteen months, for fuck’s sake. I was up for a drink, a bit of a good time before going back home. I knew Gina would be on at me if she ever found out, but I deserved a night on the town before going home. Anyone would’ve done the same.’

  ‘I understand,’ Geraldine encouraged him.

  ‘So I’m up town having a few pints and I’m plastered. I ain’t been on the piss for that long. Then it starts raining. I gets lost and goes into this lane, and there’s a stairs at the end so I think I’ll shelter under there, maybe even get a bit of shut eye because I really need a kip. Only there’s some other fucker already there, and he’s fast asleep under cover, and he’s taking up all the space. So I goes up and I gives him a kick to make him shove up and give me some room, but he never even wakes up. He’s well out of it. So I think, well if he don’t notice when I give him a hefty kick and a shove, he won’t notice if I check his pockets. Yeah, I know it was wrong, but I was pissed, right?’

  ‘And you’re a thief,’ Sam added.

  ‘Back off, bitch, a bloke’s got to make a living somehow.’

  ‘What happened next?’ Geraldine prompted him.

  ‘Nothing happens. I gets hold of his wallet, and I legs it. That’s all there is to tell. And that’s the honest truth of it
.’

  He sat back and crossed his arms.

  ‘Why did you spit on him?’

  ‘The bastard wouldn’t shove up and give me any room to get in under cover and it was raining. I told you.’

  ‘What happened to the wallet?’

  ‘Yeah, well, I pockets the cash – nearly a hundred quid and that’s the honest truth. And I chucks the wallet down a drain, God knows where. I was lost, I told you.’

  ‘That wasn’t all you took, was it?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘What?’

  She repeated the question. Lenny looked at his lawyer who merely raised his eyebrows.

  ‘OK, there’s this little box.’

  ‘What box?’

  ‘A blue box. I don’t know what it is but when I opens it there’s a ring inside it.’

  ‘This ring?’ Geraldine held up the photograph of Laura’s stolen ring.

  ‘Could be. It’s just a ring, but I figure it might be worth a bit, seeing as he’s a well-dressed geezer, even if he is blind drunk and sleeping it off in an alley.’

  ‘And his jacket.’

  ‘What jacket?’

  ‘You took the dead man’s leather jacket.’

  Lenny shook his head. ‘Look, I never knew he was dead, did I? I mean, it was dark. I couldn’t hardly see nothing. And I never took no jacket neither. How the hell was I supposed to get this jacket off of him if he was dead, like you say he was?’

  With Lenny insisting he had told them everything, they took a break. The trouble was his account could be true. He had freely admitted being in Wells Mews and robbing David. Until they found the murder weapon, they couldn’t prove Lenny had pulled the trigger.

  28

  STAN COULDN’T BE bothered to go back inside for his coat. The evening was quite mild, and he had only stepped out of the bar for a quick smoke. The sounds of London traffic were muted, but he could distinguish the roar of motorbikes from the general hum of cars on the busy main road nearby. He checked his phone. It was just past midnight. He glanced around as he lit up. The narrow street at the back of the bar was deserted. Closing his eyes and taking another drag, he was aware of a fleeting gust of wind, followed by a dull thud right beside his ear. He opened his eyes. Muttering an expletive he leapt backwards, almost tripping on the kerb. The spliff dropped from his fingers and landed in the road.

  A man lay impaled, face down, on the wrought-iron spikes of the fence at the back of the club. For a second Stan stared, stunned into immobility. The spikes were not long enough to have passed right through the man’s torso and out the other side. With the ends buried in his body, plugging his wounds, he was not losing much blood. All the same, Stan wondered how severe his internal injuries might be, and whether he could possibly survive such a landing. Mercifully, the poor guy had passed out, but he needed help urgently. With a rueful glance at his half-finished spliff, Stan pulled out his phone.

  ‘There’s a bloke here fallen on some railings and it looks real bad,’ he gabbled.

  As he was speaking, a couple of blokes walked by.

  ‘What the fuck –?’ one of them said.

  ‘He’s reporting it,’ his companion replied, pointing to Stan.

  Stan gave his name and number, and the name of the club, but he had no idea what road he was in. The woman reeled off an address which sounded right.

  ‘Yeah, I think that’s it,’ he said. ‘It’s called The Road, and it’s round the corner from Oxford Circus station, in a side street.’ There couldn’t be more than one bar with that name in the vicinity.

  ‘The emergency services should be there within fifteen minutes,’ the woman said, ‘assuming the traffic’s moving.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes? He’s going to croak by then. I’m telling you, he’s fallen on the metal railings. You got to get the fire brigade here right now.’

  There wasn’t much else he could do. The other two blokes had gone right up to the poor geezer who had fallen on to the railings and were trying to talk to him. Stan guessed they were both drunk.

  ‘Stay with us, mate,’ one of them was pleading.

  They didn’t appear to be getting much of a response. While Stan dithered about whether to join them, or go back inside for his coat, there was a blast of sirens and all at once the street was crammed with people. A couple of police cars drove straight past and parked further along, allowing an ambulance to draw up right beside the injured man. A fire engine stopped at the end of the road, blocking access to other vehicles, and two firemen came running up.

  A policeman in uniform shouted out Stan’s name. There was no reason for him to feel apprehensive, but his legs were shaking as he walked forward.

  ‘That’s me. I’m Stan Bilton.’

  He couldn’t help glancing down into the kerb to check if his spliff was still there, but he couldn’t see it. The policeman asked him a few questions about what he had seen, and why he had been there.

  ‘I just came out for a fag,’ he lied.

  The policeman wrote everything down and told him he could go.

  ‘Is that it then? I can go home?’

  ‘Unless there’s anything else?’

  ‘No, that is, I left my coat in the bar. Can I go and get it?’

  The policeman told him to try round the front entrance. Someone was shouting about metal-cutting equipment, a couple of paramedics were standing by the victim with bags and syringes, and there was a general bustle of purposeful activity around the scene of the accident. While all this was going on, one of the barmen burst through the back door of the bar and halted, gazing around in surprise. Tall and dark skinned, he was wearing a smart leather jacket that looked too big for him.

  A uniformed policeman ran over to him and ushered him on to the pavement. A moment later, another uniformed policeman disappeared through the door, presumably to prevent anyone else from stumbling through it unawares. Stan and the barman were hustled together to the end of the street.

  ‘I work there,’ the barman was protesting. ‘I need to get my gear. I got my wages in the till.’

  ‘I left my coat in there,’ Stan piped up, realising for the first time how cold he was. ‘I can’t go home without it.’

  The policeman told them that the premises had been evacuated but they would be allowed access through the front entrance, if they explained to the policeman on the door why they wanted to go inside. The back exit was cordoned off and no one was allowed near there apart from the emergency services. Stan followed the barman round the corner. A crowd had gathered outside, people who had been inside the bar and passersby, curious to discover what was going on.

  ‘Hey, Jack! Over here!’ one of the bystanders called out.

  The barman paused in his stride. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘What the fuck’s going on? Is there a bomb in there or what?’

  A burst of excited chatter rippled through the waiting throng.

  ‘Nah,’ Jack called back. ‘You’re all right. Just an accident. Some prat’s gone and fallen out of a window. I think he’s croaked.’

  His friend nodded. ‘Thought it must be a stiff. Nice jacket, dude,’ he added.

  ‘Is he dead?’ someone called out.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Ignoring the cries, Jack pushed his way through the crowd with Stan following at his heels. Stan knew exactly what had happened, but he was too knackered to deal with other people’s morbid curiosity. He was beginning to feel sick and just wanted to go home. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the bloke lying across the metal spikes, not moving.

  ‘It was horrible,’ he said aloud. No one heard him.

  29

  HAVING SPENT THE best part of the day attempting to cajole or coerce a confession out of Lenny, Geraldine was worn out. Sending the recalcitrant suspect back to his cell, she wrote up her log and cleared her desk. By the time she finished, it was nearly seven o’clock and she was hungry. She went to see Adam. Like Sam, he was convinced Lenny was guilt
y.

  ‘We know he was there, Geraldine.’

  ‘That’s merely circumstantial. It proves nothing.’

  ‘The onus of proof is not on us. We have incontrovertible evidence placing the suspect at the scene. It’s backed up by a confession, thanks to your interview. We know he robbed the victim. Who else could have been responsible for shooting him? Are you seriously suggesting someone shot the victim and then left his wallet for Lenny to pick up when he just happened to walk by?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And the onus of proof is on us. The suspect is innocent until we can prove him guilty. And we can’t. Establishing he was there isn’t the same as proving he shot David. If we could be sure no one else was there it might be different.’

  There were no functioning CCTV cameras in Wells Mews or along Wells Street. The closest camera was round the corner in Oxford Street. It would have been possible for someone to slip into the mews without being recorded on film.

  ‘I think we have a pretty watertight case against him,’ Adam insisted, although he didn’t sound very confident. ‘The balance of probabilities points to him being guilty.’

  Geraldine seized on his uncertainty. ‘That’s all it is, a probability. And then there’s the question of where he got hold of a gun, and what happened to David’s jacket.’

  Adam shook his head. ‘We may never find out what happened to that jacket, but it’s hardly germane to the investigation. We’re working on the likelihood that Lenny shot him, and the most likely explanation is generally the one that turns out to be true. We just have to work harder to get a confession out of him. Give him another twenty-four hours to stew and we’ll try again. You’re due a day off. I think you need to step back and get some perspective on all this. It might help you to forget about the missing jacket. That doesn’t matter. What’s important right now is that we know Lenny was there. Let’s focus on that. Organise another viewing of all the CCTV in the vicinity, and come down harder on the suspect to cooperate. I think the CPS will agree we have a strong case.’