by Dai Henley
Sometimes I went into our guest room, took the mattress off the bed and placed it against the wall. I’d spend an hour punching away in manic fury at my impromptu punch bag, shouting out obscenities at the top of my voice. Good job I lived in a detached house.
My biceps ached afterwards. I could hardly lift a glass of wine.
*
We spent most of the next afternoon and evening in RP’s office tossing ideas about. He loved scribbling notes, drawing diagrams and sometimes doodling whilst considering the merits of each idea. His style replicated the deliberations I made in acquiring new businesses.
Given our previous experience of the justice system, we wanted to make certain Johnson and Hartley would pay for what they did.
We eventually settled on a plan to ensure that Hartley couldn’t possibly escape the full force of the law. It had three key goals: disposing of Johnson, setting up Hartley as the killer and providing overwhelming proof that he’d arranged the arson attack.
I didn’t care about the money he’d embezzled from me. But I cared deeply about taking revenge for the loss of my family.
RP questioned me directly. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
“Yes, I am. I need to be more involved, you know that. I’ll go bloody insane if I don’t do something.”
“OK, I understand. But I’d be happier with the plan if you worked closely with one of my contractors. He’s worked for me before. He knows his way around and he’s excellent at what he does. If you’re happy with that, I’ll brief him separately. It’s not a good idea for you to know all the details, in case something goes wrong. Is that OK?”
“That’s fine.”
We finally called it a day at around 10.30pm. We’d checked and rechecked the details of the plan and decided to sleep on it.We agreed to confer the next day to see if we’d had second thoughts or come up with any modifications.
Next day, I called him to confirm that, after speaking with Alisha, we were both up for the plan as it stood.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll set the ball rolling. We don’t have a lot of time. I’m worried something might happen to Alisha. We’re dealing with dangerous men. I’ll call you back later with the details.”
*
We’d covered every angle to the nth degree and with military precision. I had complete confidence in the plan. I’d built my business empire on similar principles.
We needed to convince Johnson that Hartley wanted to meet to hand over the cash Johnson had demanded. I called in on Greenland again and asked for one more small ‘favour’, reminding him of the serious shit he was in.
I told him to text Johnson saying Hartley wanted to meet up. The venue, chosen by RP, was a disused railway arch, formerly used for car repairs in St James’s Road, close to Southwark Park.
He sent it whilst I watched. He couldn’t have been more helpful. The threat of being charged as an accessory to murder spooked him.
Alisha told me later that Johnson fired up with excitement when he received the text.
“He truly believes he’s enticed Hartley into meeting his demands. He’s unbelievably smug about it.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s it, Alisha. You don’t have to see Johnson again. It’s my call now. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.” I hugged her tightly.
*
It hadn’t rained for two months and the last few days had been humid, almost tropical. As I left home to meet RP’s ‘contractor’ at a busy pub, The Chalk and Cheese, less than half a mile away from the meeting place, the heavens opened after an extended period of thunder and lightning.
The ‘contractor’, a British Afro-Caribbean, aged around thirty-five, well built, over six feet tall and with a day or two’s stubble on his face emphasising his blackness, made himself known. His expressionless eyes matched the clothes he wore; a black beanie hat, dark trousers and a black bomber jacket. I wouldn’t have enjoyed meeting him in a dark alleyway.
He spoke few words. He asked me to call him ‘Bruno’. After a drink, we walked the short distance to the converted railway arches, holding up our collars against the driving rain. The archway building, covered in graffiti and with a dilapidated ‘To Let’ sign hanging loosely from the wall, had clearly been on the market for a while. In the otherwise empty car park, a single car was parked out of sight of the main road and close to the building.
Arriving a good half-hour before the appointed time of 11.30pm, Bruno made for the car, a 1997 maroon Toyota Avensis, before going to the archway door. He fumbled inside his coat pocket for the keys and opened the driver’s door, reached in and produced a large black holdall.
Heading for the archway entrance, he produced another key and unlocked one of the doors. From his familiarity of the layout, I guessed he’d used this venue before. I asked Bruno about the possibility of CCTV cameras covering the arches.
He spoke with only a hint of a Caribbean accent – more Essex than Barbados. “Don’t worry ’bout that. They’ve been dealt with.”
The building smelled of engine oil and was windowless except for two skylights above the double doors. Bruno reached inside his holdall and retrieved two heavy-duty torches, which he switched on and placed on a workbench. The beams shone upwards, rebounding around the arch, producing a halo effect. Several workbenches, a desk and four chairs sat on the painted concrete floor.
Occasionally, the building rumbled with the sound of trains passing over the arches.
Bruno opened his holdall again and handed me a plastic bag containing a pair of white paper overalls, complete with a hood, like the ones I’d seen forensic teams wearing at crime scenes on TV.
“Take off your jacket and trousers. Put these on,” he said. When I’d done so, he handed me a dark blue jacket, a pair of grey trousers and a blue baseball cap, which he also took from his holdall. He motioned for me put my clothes in the plastic bag and to put the replacement clothes on over the overalls. They were a tight fit. I struggled, but managed it with difficulty.
He handed me a pair of Nike trainers and socks. I swapped them with my shoes. Fortunately, they were at least two sizes larger. He put my shoes into the bag containing my jacket and trousers.
Finally, he produced two pairs of latex gloves from his coat pocket. Throwing one pair at me he said, “Put these on and sit behind the table.” He tugged the other pair onto his hands.
After ten minutes, which felt like an eternity, we heard loud rapping at the door.
Bruno opened the door but didn’t reveal himself, staying behind it. Johnson, wearing a short-sleeved sports shirt splattered with rain, came inside and peered through the gloom. As he spotted me through the torchlight, sitting facing him, his thin reedy voice, which I recognised from his court appearance, rang out.
“’Artley… is that you? You sure you’re ’Artley? Who the fuck are you?”
Bruno appeared quickly behind him and, taking Johnson by surprise, expertly kneed him in the back of his legs, forcibly driving his face down into the concrete floor.
Within seconds, he had Johnson’s hands cuffed behind him and had frog-marched him to one of the chairs facing me, yelling at him to sit down.
Johnson’s facial expression revealed terror. He’d not expected this.
“What the fuck’s going on? Where’s ’Artley? ’E’s supposed to do a deal wiv’ me. Who are you?”
I’d rehearsed being face-to-face with the killer of my family more times than I cared to remember.
Now that time had come.
Bruno stood back in the shadows as I let my rage take over. I visualised Johnson pouring petrol through the letterbox of our cottage in Lymington and setting light to it whilst Lynne, Georgie and Emily lay sleeping upstairs.
Flashbacks of the funeral and the coffins, especially the tiny one bearing Emily being carried down the aisle of the crematorium, exploded into my mind.
I yelled at Johnson, “What kind of sick bastard are you? How could you have possibly set fire to a house with
a young family sleeping in it?”
He’d gathered his composure and his cocky expression wound me up.
“Fuck off!” he shouted.
I stood up, pushed the table to one side and punched him hard in the stomach and, as he yelped and bent forward, I followed up with a hard bony fist on the side of his jaw. He spat out bloody phlegm onto the floor. I hit him again, this time with my other fist on the other side of his face. Fragments of an equally bloody tooth ricocheted off the rock-solid floor.
“Not so cocky now, are you, you sack of shit!”
I hit him a few more times around his head, which rolled from side to side with each blow like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Then I stopped.
I slumped down in my chair, exhausted by my efforts. Johnson sat opposite, hunched over, blood dripping from his nose and mouth. He started whining.
“It wasn’t just me! ’Artley’s the bloke you really want. Lemme go!” I nodded to Bruno to take over. He’d watched the proceedings, the merest hint of a smile creasing his face. Unseen by Johnson, he produced a brown bottle of clear liquid and a white cloth from his pocket. He undid the bottle and shook out its contents.
He came at Johnson from behind, put an arm around his neck, wrenching his head backwards, and with his other hand holding the cloth, he placed it over Johnson’s nose and mouth. He held it in position whilst Johnson’s mangled face registered first surprise, then fear as he slumped unconscious, almost falling off his chair.
Another train rumbled overhead and the walls of the archway quivered.
Bruno unlocked the handcuffs holding Johnson, turned off the torches, and threw them into his holdall. In the darkness, we hauled Johnson to the door.
Once outside, Bruno locked up and threw me the keys to the railway arch door as we dragged Johnson to the Toyota Avensis on the far side of the car park. He opened the boot, we fed Johnson in and slammed it shut.
We threw our bags on the back seat and Bruno pressed the ignition keys into my hand. He sat low down into the rear passenger seat as I got into the driver’s seat.
I’d memorised the route we’d previously decided to take at our meeting with RP. He designed it so that road traffic CCTV cameras could pick us up.
I drove the one and three-quarter miles to Mill Street, close to Butlers Wharf, and turned right into Bermondsey Wall West, parallel with the River Thames. I parked and turned off the lights. We sat there for a short while to ensure no one had ventured out for a late night walk along the Embankment.
The rain had subsided slightly but the wind had picked up, whistling around the warehouses facing directly onto the river.
We both got out of the car. Bruno opened the boot and taped Johnson’s hands together behind his back, whilst he remained unconscious. Between us, we hauled him onto his feet.
Bruno took a black, rusty anchor from the boot. It must have weighed around five kilos. He quickly tied it around Johnson’s waist as I held him. Despite this weight attached, we were easily able to lift him over the four-foot wall and drop him into the murky Thames.
Due to the high tide, he splashed into the water quickly. It was over in less than two minutes.
I glanced over to my left and saw Tower Bridge lit up like a Christmas tree, its reflection shimmering in the water. Adrenaline rushed through my body. Johnson had forfeited his right to life for what he did. I’d dealt with one worthless lowlife.
I couldn’t wait to tackle the next.
*
I took the driver’s seat and Bruno tucked down out of sight in the rear passenger seats again. This time, I stuck to back streets favoured by cab drivers, where there were fewer CCTV cameras. Twenty minutes later, we arrived at a two-storey block of flats in Percival Street in Clerkenwell, north of the Thames.
We parked in a residents’ parking place with poor street lighting. Almost before the wheels had stopped turning, Bruno grabbed his holdall, silently nodded to me, got out of the nearside rear passenger door, and swiftly made off.
I never saw him again.
Killing the engine, I picked up the bag with my clothes and shoes in it and locked the car. I crossed the road and made my way to flat number 14 on the first floor. I opened the door with a key on the same ring as the car keys.
Still wearing the latex gloves, I stumbled into the entrance in the darkness and made my way to the bedroom. Hartley lay on top of the bed out for the count, gently snoring, his eyes closed and his jaw slack.
I had an overwhelming urge to go the kitchen drawer, select the biggest knife and thrust it into Hartley’s chest. I regretted that wasn’t part of the plan.
Earlier that evening, Bruno had gained access to Hartley’s flat and blagged his way in, taking Hartley by surprise using his seemingly well-practised chloroform routine. That’s when he’d taken Hartley’s clothes and trainers and stuffed them in his holdall.
I found a cupboard housing a central heating boiler, took off Hartley’s ‘borrowed’ clothes and stuffed the damp jacket, trousers, baseball hat, trainers and the bottle of chloroform behind the boiler, making them difficult to spot.
I removed the paper overalls and socks and stuffed them into my bag. I planned to burn them once I returned home. I retrieved my own clothes from the plastic bag and put them on.
I hung the car keys back on the hook behind the front door. I put the railway arch keys in a sideboard drawer. Removing the latex gloves and placing them in my bag, I silently went out of the door, down the steps onto the street.
The rain had finally stopped and I walked for over an hour though the puddles to clear my head. Crossing a deserted London Bridge, I paused for a while and stared down at the Thames, glossy from the lights on the embankment.
I swear I saw Johnson’s body floating downriver carried by the current. I knew it wasn’t possible with a 5kg weight attached.
Nonetheless, I bawled, “Good riddance, you fucker!”
*
Now 1.30am, too late to talk to Alisha or RP, I hailed a cab near St Thomas’s Street. The last thing I wanted was to have a conversation with the driver. I pretended to sleep. Arriving home twenty-five minutes later, I poured myself a large brandy, which I downed in one gulp.
Once I’d downed the second glass, my satisfaction with the plan slowly turned to remorse. Had I actually conspired to murder Leroy Johnson? I realised I’d have nightmares about it for a long time.
I prided myself that I could always instinctively separate right from wrong in life. But now, the needle on my moral compass had unswervingly swung in the direction of getting justice for Lynne, Georgie and Emily. I reasoned that if I hadn’t dealt with Johnson, I’d have failed them.
I reminded myself of his callous and heartless actions. This, plus the calming affect of the brandy, brought a modicum of relief.
I couldn’t sleep, my mind going over every detail of the evening’s events. The sound of Johnson’s body splashing into the Thames continuously replayed in my mind.
Next morning, I called RP on his office landline soon after nine o’clock. He said it was safer than using a mobile – less chance of being traced. He’d already heard from Bruno, who’d brought him up to speed. He asked me if the rest of the plan had gone as we’d agreed.
“Yes… yes, very well. Everything’s been returned to its rightful owner. Thanks for your input.”
“That’s OK. Now leave it at least twenty-four hours. Then make the phone call.”
I called Alisha at her office and gave her the same cryptic message.
“Good!” she grunted.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
October 1999
The phone call RP had reminded me to make was to Crimestoppers. I thought it was a risk and remained sceptical. However, RP assured me that Crimestoppers’ promise of anonymity had never been broken in over eleven years since it started.
“Think about it,” he said. “Their reputation lives or dies on this single promise. If just one caller’s name is discovered, that’s it. No-one will trus
t them.”
However, I couldn’t help thinking it a bizarre thing for me to do. I’d just helped to murder a man. Now I planned to tell them about it.
I went to a payphone box a mile from home to make the call. Despite RP’s assurance, I didn’t want Crimestoppers to trace it.
I’d written down the key points I needed to get across and checked them again and again. I picked up the phone and returned it to the cradle at least half a dozen times.
Finally, I dialled the number and held on. The call handler, a volunteer called Sue, introduced herself with a kind, soft voice and listened without interruption whilst I read from my brief notes. I told her the precise location where we’d thrown Johnson over the river wall and gave Hartley’s name as the likely suspect, together with his address.
She read back the notes she’d taken and asked me to confirm them.
“Did you witness the crime?”
“No, I overheard a conversation in a pub earlier tonight.”
“Do you know the person you suspect threw this person into the river?”
“No, I don’t.”
“How do you know his address, then?”
“Oh… I… er… used to know him. I heard his name mentioned. I’m sure it’s the same man.”
I wanted to hang up.
Before I did, she said, “OK. I’ll pass on a report to the Metropolitan Police. They’ll want to consider what you’ve told me and decide what to do.”
“Yes, OK.”
“You know, this is a serious allegation you’ve made. If you have any more information to impart please call us again.” She gave me a reference number. “Thank you for calling Crimestoppers.”
It didn’t feel like such a good idea phoning them after all. Could be the police would treat it as a hoax call and not take any action.
We’d have to wait and see.
*
The next few days dawned crisp, bright and sunny and the high temperature for the time of the year lifted my mood marginally.
