Souvenirs of Murder

by Margaret Duffy

  I flung my arms around him and held him tight.

  ‘Please go,’ he murmured, a break in his voice. ‘Go to the hotel and rest. You don’t look very well.’

  ‘But I’m in this with you,’ I protested.

  He misunderstood, or might have chosen to do so. ‘No, they’re not interested in prosecuting you for helping me resist arrest. Greenway’ll pull strings. Daws promised that you’d be protected too.’

  Still I held him, appalled that it was all my fault for bringing him here.

  ‘Please go,’ Patrick said again. ‘What you’ve found out has probably cleared me of everything already.’

  I let him go and he kissed me quickly and then went off down that ghastly, blighted dead end back towards the main road, walking tall but limping just a little as he does when he’s very tired.

  What stopped me from running headlong round to Rundle’s house and putting a bullet into his thick, stupid skull?

  I still don’t know.

  EIGHTEEN

  I was not permitted to have the car, which was requisitioned as ‘evidence’, and succeeded in finding a taxi to take me back to the hotel. As I half expected to find a reception committee in the shape of one of the large coppers I had upended earlier waiting to charge me with ‘perverting the course of justice’ or ‘assisting an offender’ or some other such codswallop, it went towards lifting my black mood just an iota to encounter nothing of the sort.

  The cruel pictures were there, in my imagination: you suffer when you write. They would have made him lie face down in the road before searching him for weapons. They would have handcuffed him where he lay before hauling him to his feet and, because of his service history, he would then have been taken to an extra secure police station, Paddington perhaps, where terrorist suspects are held.

  It was all utterly, utterly unbearable.

  My phone rang.

  ‘Yes?’ I sort of gasped, realizing that tears were running down my cheeks.

  ‘The grapevine’s in overdrive,’ said James Carrick’s soft Scottish voice.

  ‘They’ve got him,’ I sobbed. ‘This fine courageous man who’s served his country for most of his life has been carted off like some filthy, murdering yob and . . .’ I couldn’t speak any more.

  James talked to me. I can’t really remember what he said, only that the words washed over me like a warm, comforting blanket.

  ‘But the man’s used to this kind of thing,’ I do recollect he finished up by saying. ‘All that training for Special Ops; being dragged through the mud and chucked in rivers. D’you want me to come up?’

  ‘How can you?’ I asked, staggered.

  ‘Easy. I’ll throw a sickie again.’

  ‘Patrick would prefer me to go home.’

  ‘Well he would. But it’s up to you.’

  Carrick did not ring me when he arrived at the hotel as it was the early hours of the morning by then as he had driven up. But he did the next morning and we met for breakfast where he bullied me into eating something.

  ‘As far as I can tell there’s been nothing in the media,’ he said after dealing briskly with a full English. ‘They’re keeping it strictly in-house. So what d’you plan to do? Storm the nick where he’s being held?’

  This I knew was to make me smile and he succeeded.

  ‘I just want to wring the neck of whoever committed these murders until he confesses,’ I replied. I had brought him up to date with events and showed him the information I had obtained from the Serbian Embassy as he ate, including what Patrick had said to Rundle at the DCI’s home.

  ‘Does Patrick reckon this has anything to do with that shoot-out years ago?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, he doesn’t think so – but it might.’

  ‘We still don’t know the names of these surveillance people.’

  ‘I forgot to mention that bit to you. Rundle said he’d emailed them to Greenway.’

  ‘Then let’s go and talk to Greenway.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that he’s no longer involved. It’s Met business now.’

  Carrick brooded. I wondered if he was thinking of the time Patrick had found him when he had been shut up inside an old boiler at a derelict factory and left to die. Patrick had had to fight his way through three of the gang responsible in order to rescue him. And the cases they had worked on together when we had been with MI5, including when Patrick’s brother, Larry, had been killed.

  ‘When you had a snoop round that flat thinking it was where a watch was being kept on the Pangborne place, only it wasn’t, and came upon Hulton . . .’ he began thoughtfully.

  ‘The right flat was next door but one,’ I said, guessing what his next question would be.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look round that.’

  ‘Unofficially?’

  ‘Oh, aye. I’m in bed with the flu. Anyway, bugger the Met.’ And, reverting to type, ‘Are ye armed, hen?’

  ‘Too right.’

  ‘We haven’t discussed that.’

  Police vehicles were still parked outside the house where Hulton’s body had been found, a wide area cordoned-off with incident tape causing Carrick to leave his car some distance away. A constable standing by the front door was stamping his feet, trying to keep warm.

  Next door but one there were curtains at the top window that faced the street, which would have made it easier to observe a property farther along on the other side without being spotted. The front door to this particular house in the terrace was open and we went straight in and up the stairs. An elderly woman was mopping the floor at the top of the first flight.

  ‘Oo are you?’ she demanded to know, straightening her back with a wince.

  ‘Police,’ said Carrick, producing his warrant card but not giving her time to read it. ‘Is anyone living in the top flat now?’

  ‘Nah, but a bloke’s been dossin’ there. Gorn now though. Could ’e be the one what done in that bloke in the end house? This place has never seen nuffink like it.’

  ‘Who was he, do you know?’

  ‘A rough type. I kept right away from ’im, I tell yer. ’E broke in. Smashed the lock. Someone’s supposed to be fixing it. Next Christmas I ‘spect.’

  ‘This was after the police used the flat for surveillance work?’

  ‘So that’s oo they woz! Ho yus. After that. Just for a coupla days it was.’

  We thanked her and went on up, my companion perceptibly fizzing with enthusiasm.

  ‘Gloves,’ Carrick muttered when we were standing outside the damaged door. ‘We don’t know who this man was. Do you have any with you?’

  ‘That’s what handbags are for,’ I told him, finding just one pair. ‘You have them, you’re the professional detective. I won’t touch anything.’

  Warily, we went in. The place stank but, after all, someone had been rather ill in here. I expected the layout to be the same or similar to that of the other flat but this was a series of small rooms including a proper bathroom and kitchen, the former definitely a no-go area as far as I was concerned. The room at the front, the largest, was about twelve feet square, and like the others it was empty of furniture. The only item in the place was a supermarket bag full of rubbish in the kitchen. Very carefully, Carrick began to go through it.

  ‘So was it Hulton?’ I wondered aloud. ‘He knew the police had been here.’

  ‘But why the hell was he hanging around?’ Carrick said, dubiously unwrapping what turned out to be the mouldy remains of a takeaway. ‘You saw him at the pub, he was next door but one and he might, might have been here too. Was he hanging around hoping to catch up with the man who killed his daughter?’

  ‘That theory has a lot going for it,’ I said. ‘But why would whoever it was come back here?’

  Carrick looked up at me with a glint in his eyes. ‘Because it was his job to do so?’

  ‘Oh, brother,’ I whispered. ‘Did Hulton think it might have been one of the cops on watch?’

  ‘One of the cops who’d changed his n
ame from his Serbian one?’

  ‘Mlandan Beckovic!’ I exclaimed, suddenly remembering the name.

  ‘It’s happened, you know. Not all that long ago a Super in the Met was interviewing new entrants when he recognized someone he’d arrested for murder nine years previously. The bloke had assumed a new identity.’

  ‘I can’t believe that if it was Beckovic he joined the Met with a view to settling old scores.’

  ‘No, but crooks do try to join the police, as in the case I’ve just mentioned. It gives them a huge advantage. And now that identity theft’s on the increase . . .’ He broke off and whistled softly.

  I had been looking around the rest of the kitchen. ‘What have you got?’

  Carrick delved into the bottom of the bag. ‘There’s an empty bottle in here. The sort that drugs are kept in in pharmacies and hospitals.’

  I went over and we looked at the label.

  ‘Amytal Sodium,’ he read out loud. ‘It’s a barbiturate. It looks as though we might have found the stuff that was put in the whisky. God, if this was full and whoever it was tipped it all into three or four bottles of Scotch then I’m surprised they lived long enough to be shot.’

  ‘There might be fingerprints on it.’

  ‘Quite. You wouldn’t have a specimen bag on you, I suppose? – although I might have some in the car.’

  I handed one over.

  Carrick said, ‘If the guy on duty the night before the shootings was nobbled, poisoned, in some way there’s still plenty of evidence in the bathroom. Did anyone investigate that, do you know?’

  ‘They didn’t,’ I told him. ‘But please don’t ask me to take samples.’

  ‘Och, I’ll do it. I might even have some wee plastic sample phials in the car too . . .’

  He did and more potential evidence was gathered.

  ‘I reckon something went a bit wrong with their plan,’ Carrick said, removing the gloves. ‘I mean, if the man here on his own was dosed with something to make him ill during the night it would have had to be done somewhere else, before he arrived, as time would have been needed for it to take effect. I’m sure they would have wanted to take out the people over the road under cover of darkness, as they say in corny detective stories. Only for some reason their plans went a bit wrong. Therefore, and still I’m guessing, the murderer was the one who should have been here on duty with him, not the man who was to have taken over from him next morning and who must have received some official-sounding message telling him he wasn’t needed.’

  ‘Unless they were both in it together.’

  ‘That might be stretching it a bit. Whatever the truth we must find out everything about these surveillance people.’

  ‘Where are you going to take the evidence?’

  ‘You’re the one who works for SOCA.’

  ‘Yes, but as I said earlier, it is Rundle’s case.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of him at all. Is Greenway interested in getting Patrick off the hook?’

  ‘He is, but I don’t think he can justify throwing much in the way of resources at it.’

  ‘Does he like Rundle?’

  ‘No.’

  James grinned.

  I rang Greenway and, without explaining further, asked if I could see him. He sounded surprised but immediately said I should come to SOCA HQ.

  There were to be more surprises; first another for Greenway on seeing Carrick and then a further one when James and I caught sight of Patrick sitting in the Commander’s office, drinking coffee. I got the impression that he had not been there long.

  ‘I threw my weight around,’ Greenway said, having been patient during the handshakes and hugs and provided extra coffee. ‘I don’t do it very often but –’ he seemed for a moment to be in danger of losing his temper again but mastered it and, his voice thick with anger, continued – ‘Rundle crowed. That shitty little DCI crowed to me that he’d made one of mine lay in the gutter to be arrested. More importantly as far as the law goes, he has no evidence to connect Patrick with Hulton’s death, none at all, and that was what he had arrested him for. We’ve checked and just about his every movement yesterday can be accounted for. The morning at the clinic, taxi rides when, just to be on the safe side he took the numbers of the vehicles, then lunch with Richard Daws – God above, is there a better alibi in the whole universe than that? – and then another taxi to the hotel where the receptionist remembers he arrived just before she went off duty at two thirty. By that time Hulton had been dead for just under five hours. We know that because his watch was smashed and had stopped at nine sixteen, after Patrick had booked himself in to the clinic.’

  ‘Who found the body, sir?’ Carrick enquired.

  ‘I take it you’re here in the capacity of Ingrid’s minder in the assumed, at the time, absence of her husband and taking into consideration the hazardousness of the investigation.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Admirable. There was a tip-off.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Stinks, doesn’t it?’

  ‘What about these surveillance men whose details Rundle said he’d sent you?’ I said impatiently, having thought that it was perfectly possible for Hulton’s killer to have altered the time on the watch before smashing it.

  ‘Their names are Kenneth Hills and Daniel Rushton-Smith. Hills is a one-time traffic cop and due for retirement. He hails from Manchester. Rushton-Smith is thirty-nine years old and has been in the force only eighteen months. According to his CV he has mid-European antecedents. Take a look, I’ve printed off his photograph.’

  ‘I’ve already seen it,’ Patrick told us quietly. ‘He bears a remarkable resemblance to the mugshot of Mladan Beckovic we actually have in this building.’

  The colour photo came into my hands and I stared at the dark, somewhat sullen features. ‘Is this the man who was upstairs at Pangborne’s house?’ I asked Patrick.

  ‘I still don’t remember seeing his face.’

  Greenway said, ‘So now I’m not tiptoeing around this any more for fear of offending our colleagues in central London I intend to have him picked up. He’s on his second day off this week, apparently.’

  ‘I can’t understand him being stupid enough to leave that barbiturate bottle in the kitchen of the flat,’ Carrick commented. ‘If it was him, of course.’

  ‘He’s probably a lousy policeman,’ I said.

  ‘The four of us will go with back-up,’ Greenway decided. ‘Unusual, I know, but a lot is at stake here. I want to see this man’s reaction when he and Patrick come face to face.’

  ‘In that case I’d like to put in an official request to carry a firearm strictly for self-defence purposes,’ Patrick said. Then added with the trace of a smile, ‘Sir.’

  ‘Request denied. But doesn’t Ingrid have your one-time MI5 short-barrelled Smith and Wesson?’ He shot to his feet. ‘Well? Are you coming?’

  We gulped down the remains of our coffee and followed him out.

  Rushton-Smith, according to Met records, lived in Hammersmith. Only he did not, the house empty, the windows boarded up. Greenway, determined seemingly to be right at the forefront of events, pounded on the front door of the semi-detached house next to it and there was a short conversation with a woman. Patrick, Carrick and I, plus the driver, remained in the Commander’s car, another with reinforcements parked right behind us, watching and waiting.

  ‘She doesn’t know where the owners or tenants of the place are,’ Greenway reported on his return. ‘It’s been empty like that for several months and she’s never seen anyone living there who looked like the man in the mugshot I showed her. So it’s either a phoney address or he hasn’t bothered to update his details.’ Back in the car he turned to flash a big smile at the three of us in the rear seat. ‘I’m getting quite excited about this.’

  ‘Where to now, sir?’ asked the driver.

  ‘Wood Green nick. We’ll talk to Kenneth Hills. No, hang on, I’ll find out exactly where he is first.’ He grabbed his mobi
le.

  Rundle gave the information immediately. Hills was on duty with the colleague who had suffered food poisoning and they were at an address in the centre of Wood Green keeping watch on a Chinese restaurant thought to be employing illegal immigrants. There was, the DCI added, a car parking area to the rear of the shops. I thought the advice pointless as Greenway was in the mood to block the road and bring the place to a standstill. But as it happened the pair were watching the rear of the premises in question across the car park from a storeroom-cum-office they had commandeered over a charity shop that fronted on to another road.

  ‘The four of us will go but do try not to look like cops on the way over,’ Greenway announced. ‘I don’t want to bust the cover of these blokes and I’m not for one moment suspecting them of anything dodgy. However, a little exposure to fire-power never did anyone any harm.’ Unlike Richard Daws he did not pronounce it ‘far-par’.

  No wonder Rundle had been so helpful, I mused, he was still recovering from his own singeing. I also wondered what had made Greenway change his mind about interfering, not just because Rundle had become a bit cocky, surely.

  We wandered over to the charity shop, Patrick and I first, the others following half a minute or so later, and discovered that the rear entrance was locked. We found our way round to the front and went in, Greenway waving his warrant card at the two Oxfam ladies on the way through and giving them one of his big smiles.

  ‘Morning!’ said the Commander loudly at the top of a flight of narrow stairs.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ said one of the two men with cameras and other surveillance equipment in the gloomy and cramped room we found ourselves in – the grubby curtains were almost closed – which instantly became very crowded indeed.

  Rundle had warned them then.

  ‘Which one of you is Kenneth Hills?’ said Greenway after quickly introducing the rest of those to whom they were talking.

  ‘I am,’ said the man who had first spoken; of medium height, slim, with a thin moustache.

  ‘Tell me, in no more than twenty words, why you didn’t report for duty on the morning of the murders at Park Road, Muswell Hill.’