Dark Side

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘Patrick and I didn’t get this far,’ I said as we reached the three stairs with the door at the top.

  ‘As we already know those renting the premises shouldn’t have either,’ Lynn said. ‘But they broke through and replaced the door with this one and used this part of the building they weren’t paying rent for as a sort of doss-house and hide-away. There’s no power in here at all as the owner had it all disconnected for safety’s sake before he started work.’

  We entered a very large room, with a couple of doors on the left-hand side, that was strangely bright after the previous gloom. The windows here had not been boarded up – there had been no reason to do so. The restoration project was manifest as the whole area had been stripped out, including the interior partitions, the joists overhead supported by steel props. Old electricity cables and water pipes dangled down everywhere and the plaster had all been knocked off the walls. The floors were bare boards – where you could see them for rubbish, that is – plus clothing and sleeping bags left by the intruders. An ancient sofa stood in one corner, perhaps brought in from the club.

  Methodically, and although we knew it had already been searched, we worked our way through the piles of stuff, going through all the pockets of clothing – they had left in an awful hurry – before putting it all in a large heap at one side of the room. We must have been more thorough than the police team as we discovered another handgun and a wad of fifty-pound notes, counterfeit like the others, possibly, in the pockets of an anorak in one corner. Lynn placed these items in evidence bags while no doubt composing a suitable rocket for those who had missed them.

  ‘I think those are just a loo and a bathroom,’ she said when we were finishing around fifteen minutes later, having even tipped out and re-examined the bags of rubbish, and were regarding the two remaining doorways. ‘But I wasn’t present when the first search was made.’ She opened the first one, which did indeed reveal a revolting lavatory.

  The second would not open, the handle immovable. In response to her silent gestures we followed her to the other side of the room.

  ‘I’m a bit worried about this as even if it’s somehow locked from the outside the handle should still move, shouldn’t it?’ she hissed. ‘And if it’s locked from the inside it might mean someone’s in there holding it.’

  ‘Anyone could have got in through the windows,’ Joanna whispered, looking out of the one by which she was standing. ‘Look, there’s a fire escape on the next one. And that anorak we’ve just found might not have been here when it was first searched.’

  ‘It hardly warrants calling up help,’ Lynn fretted. ‘The beastly thing’s probably just jammed and I’d be the laughing stock of the nick.’

  ‘It’s a very large anorak,’ I pointed out.

  They just looked at me, rather round-eyed.

  ‘Shall I shoot the lock off?’ I went on to offer, knowing that was exactly what my working partner would have done right now.

  ‘What, with the weapon we’ve just found?’ Lynn responded, askance.

  ‘Of course not. I have my own.’

  I could almost hear her thinking. Finally, she whispered, ‘We ought to give a warning first.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘OK, SOCA’s doing it without my permission.’

  I took the Smith and Wesson from my jacket pocket and went back to the door, leaving the two slight cases of heebie-jeebies where they were. This threatened to become three when I heard a slight sound of movement on the other side of the door.

  I stood well clear and the shot cracked out, the cheap lock smashed in a cloud of wood splinters. There was a howl of alarm from within and Kev burst out, a tsunami of unshaven oaf, saw the gun and then me, jinked and made for the exit.

  ‘Get him!’ I yelled to my two apparently transfixed companions.

  ‘Police! You’re under arrest!’ Lynn gabbled as she led the chase after him, getting the regulation bits out of the way.

  We got him.

  Comprehensively.

  Three women, vengeful for three different reasons, all with some training in self-defence that came gloriously back to us, arrested him.

  Better than that, we pulverized him into submission.

  First.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Apparently he could hardly wait to get into the custody suite and they’re getting a medic to look him over,’ James Carrick said, eyeing Joanna and me when I dropped her back at home. The pair of us had made a point of tidying our hair and repaired any flaws with regard to make-up before we left the nick. Lynn had not bothered to address her dishevelled state and I really hoped she would receive all the credit for the arrest.

  ‘There was no food there,’ Joanna commented in off-hand fashion. ‘He’d have had to emerge soon anyway.’

  ‘Did he resist arrest then?’ her husband persevered.

  ‘Of course he did! Tried to kick, punch and even bite us. We had to get quite rough with him.’ Perceiving suspicion – I had an idea he was actually worried that his wife might be had up for assault – she added, ‘James, you’ve never even clapped eyes on this man. He’s an eighteen, or even twenty, stone thug with a brain the size of a pea.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he soothed.

  We were both concealing reddened and potentially bruised knuckles but I felt quite pleased with myself for not having yielded to temptation and floored him by hitting him with the gun butt. Patrick always tells me that my merciful streak will be the death of me one day.

  Carrick continued, ‘And on the grapevine Lynn heard just as she got back that someone’s taken a shot at Commander Greenway again. That’s what she actually rang to tell me.’

  ‘They didn’t hit him, I hope,’ I said.

  ‘No, but it was a very near miss this time and the same method as last time – two blokes on a motorbike, presumably stolen. The bike drew alongside and the pillion passenger took a shot at him as he was walking back to the office after having had a coffee break at a local café.’

  ‘Surely he’s not still going to the one where the shooting took place last time!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Dunno,’ he replied tiredly.

  Kev, whose full name was Kevin Hopkins – someone at the police station recognized him – was pronounced to be merely bruised and a little frayed at the edges and fit for questioning. I had to admire DI Campbell for dismissing out of hand his claim that he had been savagely beaten up by the crew of the area car who had answered Lynn’s request to help her take her prisoner away. The DI had then charged him with assault and resisting arrest and being in possession of a firearm and counterfeit currency, for a start, the anorak we had found being his property. Campbell had also made no comment at all about any assistance the DS might have received, official or otherwise, both of which small enigmas I asked James about when he had forwarded these titbits of information to me over the phone later that same day.

  ‘It’s the Scotland thing,’ he said. ‘If you get burgled out in the sticks near big cities the crime prevention officer usually tells you to get yourself a shotgun. It’s a different country. We don’t pander to criminals up there.’

  ‘I hope Campbell will interview Hopkins himself.’

  ‘No news on that yet. But at least he’s been charged in connection with Patrick and I being beaten up. Is he there, by the way?’

  ‘No, he thinks Hamsworth’s bolted to London so that’s where he is.’

  ‘It would figure if they were responsible for both attacks on Greenway. I just hope the man gets himself a minder now. And I have to tell you, I admire Patrick’s courage in carrying on with this.’

  I too hoped Greenway was getting armed protection. I also wanted to be at the nick, right now, with Patrick, interrogating Hopkins about Cooper’s murder. It seemed to me that there was no official urgency to do this.

  I thought the most natural thing to do in the circumstances would be to contact the commander about his narrow escape.

  ‘News travels fast,’ he commented wryl
y.

  ‘James Carrick heard it through official sources,’ I explained and then went on to inform him about the arrest of the club bouncer. ‘But we didn’t find the other murder weapon – probably a hammer,’ I added. Desperate for him to get involved with the peripheral investigations into Hamsworth and his gang, I then said, ‘Sorry, I know it’s not for me to say this but everything’s in a state of paralysis here in Bath. James Carrick can’t take charge because he’s still not fit and has been charged with Cooper’s murder and Patrick’s God knows where looking for Hamsworth. Can’t SOCA give it a bit more priority?’

  I felt I could not have put it more tactfully. And I had left out the bit about Patrick not yet being fit. This fact was gnawing at me.

  ‘It’s perfectly all right for you to say that kind of thing,’ the commander hastened to assure me. ‘But believe me I’m right up to my ears here with at least two other vital investigations that need my personal attention as well as the National Crime Agency thing. I’m sure what you have is only a temporary glitch. But please keep me right in the picture.’

  I felt like raging at him that he could easily spare half a day, and was perfectly entitled to question a man suspected of murder in order to try to tie up an important end in one of his own inquiries. He would thus possibly save a lot of work and expensive man hours, if one really was going to talk about money, and ensure the personal safety of one of his staff, not to mention that of several other police officers who were working on various aspects of the case.

  ‘You’ve gone quiet, Ingrid,’ Greenway remarked.

  So I said it, but not raging.

  He went quiet.

  On a gusty sigh he finally said, ‘OK. I’ll come down on an early train. Tomorrow. I’ll phone Campbell and tell him I’m coming in case he’s planning on sending that muscle-bound lout away on remand. You’ll have to brief me and, if you want to, can assist at the interview.’

  I found myself staring at my mobile after he had rung off. I had said nothing to him about Hopkins’ personal appearance, only that he was the door man, the bouncer. So who had Greenway been talking to?

  Sticking firmly to the rules, Commander Greenway first arrested Hopkins on behalf of SOCA, the charge that of grievous bodily harm relating to the assaults on Patrick and me at the club. I was cautiously congratulating myself on succeeding in getting him to come as it meant that for the first time since his arrival at Manvers Street Hopkins was encountering someone as big as he was, albeit not mostly blubber.

  Apparently David Campbell had been staggered when Greenway had announced his intention but when we turned up was obviously not happy about my involvement. Greenway pointed out that I was acting as his assistant and would take a few notes as he would leave all the recorded evidence in Bath. He went on to say that he had no problem with the DI being present as an observer if he so wished and would be interested in having the same role when Campbell interviewed the suspect in connection with other charges at a later date. This, again, was all very right and proper but I thought it would be impossible for matters to proceed along any tidy demarcation lines. However, the DI found himself hardly in a position to argue.

  I had put Arnica on my hands to alleviate the bruising and the first thing Hopkins said when he had been cautioned and the interview recording machine switched on was, ‘That woman beat hell out of me! With the others! And I didn’t do nothin’ to deserve it!’

  Urbanely, Greenway said, ‘You resisted arrest with violence. And I would like to point out that the three ladies who apprehended you are slightly built, one being only just over five feet four inches in height. So I would keep quiet if I were you – unless you want to be laughed at.’

  Hopkins lapsed into a sullen silence. He had a hatching black eye and there was a big bruise on the side of his jaw that I was fairly sure was where Patrick had hit him. Other than that his face had a few livid marks and both lips were swollen, one with a small split. We had kicked his backside rather a lot – I didn’t want to know about the state of that – and he was sitting rather uncomfortably in his chair.

  ‘I understand that you worked at Jingles, the night club,’ Greenway began by saying.

  Hopkins grunted.

  ‘As well as your official duties as doorman did you act as some kind of bodyguard for a man using the name, among others, of Nick Hamsworth when he was on the premises?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’ve never been nobody’s bodyguard.’

  ‘You do know him, though.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was there, in charge, that night at the club when you seriously assaulted two of my operatives.’

  ‘We didn’t know they was the law. There was a buzz goin’ round that a mobster from Bristol was goin’ to try to take over the club.’

  ‘Answer the question. Do you know this man?’

  ‘S’pose I do, then,’ Hopkins muttered.

  ‘And because of this rumour the decision had been made to break into a part of the building that wasn’t included in the rental agreement – in order perhaps that you could remain on the premises at night to guard it and use it as a hideaway.’

  ‘I don’t know about rental agreements and stuff like that.’

  ‘I think you’re lying. Were you aware that the club was being run as an illegal brothel?’

  ‘I don’t know nothin’ about that either. I just did as I was told.’

  ‘Orders issued by Hamsworth – who also liked to be known as Raptor.’

  The man just shrugged.

  ‘Where is he, by the way?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘It looks as though he’s done a runner and left you to take the blame.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what were you doing there? Hiding in a bathroom, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I haven’t got nowhere else to go, have I?’

  ‘No home or digs?’

  ‘I got chucked out for not payin’ the rent.’

  ‘So as well as leaving you to take the rap, Hamsworth hasn’t paid you.’

  Again, Hopkins shrugged.

  ‘Left behind like all the rubbish,’ Greenway murmured.

  ‘Who are you callin’ rubbish?’ Kev shouted.

  ‘I’m not. But it’s the way you were treated. Abandoned with no money, no food and every prospect of soon being arrested for serious assault.’

  ‘It’s only their word against mine,’ Hopkins said with a hint of triumph and a jerk of his head in my direction.

  I caught Greenway’s eye and said, ‘According to one of the men arrested when two undercover officers were set upon by a group of thugs previously to the rear of Beckford Square, it was you who issued the orders, passed down from the boss. You’ve already been charged in connection with that. Like all of them, no doubt, this man had suffered violence from you and his relatives had been threatened if he didn’t do as he was told. It’s going to end up being several people’s word against yours. And here you are, the one left behind to serve a long prison sentence. They always made fun of you too, didn’t they, Kev?’

  He glowered at me and I was glad that two other men were with me in the room.

  ‘They being Hamsworth and what Benny Cooper referred to as his private army, I mean,’ I went on. ‘The ex-servicemen, not those in the club that night. Those were just the local hangers-on and odd-job boys, weren’t they? And now they’ve all high-tailed it to London, leaving what they regard as stupid old Kev behind.’

  Perhaps thinking that he might have to act as my minder if I carried on in this vein, Greenway quickly said, ‘So here you are charged with GBH and another charge of murder soon to follow.’

  ‘Murder?’ Hopkins echoed, his small eyes popping.

  ‘Cooper. You were obeying orders just like you said and bludgeoned him with a hammer before finishing him off by cutting his throat.’

  I had been thinking that the interview was not going at all well, without any proper structure, but it appeared that Gre
enway had his methods.

  ‘I wasn’t involved with that!’ the big man protested. ‘I wasn’t even there that night they grabbed the cop and …’

  ‘Keep talking,’ the commander ordered.

  Hopkins leaned forward in his chair, winced and sat back again. ‘Look, I wasn’t there. I was ill. I got a horrible bug after fallin’ in the drain. It was just after that I got kicked out of the digs. Honest, I wasn’t there.’

  ‘OK. They grabbed the cop, and then what?’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ no more.’

  ‘But if you weren’t there and completely innocent it’s a good idea to provide a bit more information. That way I might believe you.’

  Gazing at the ceiling for a moment, the man appeared to come to a decision. ‘All right. Cooper was making a real nuisance of himself. Right bumptious little sod he was. And then, when he started ordering everyone around when the boss wasn’t there …’

  ‘Hamsworth decided to get rid of him,’ Greenway said when the big man stopped talking.

  ‘Nah, he wasn’t there then either.’

  ‘Oh?’

  After a long pause, Hopkins said, ‘They all got a bit drunk.’

  ‘Who’s all?’

  ‘The blokes at the club the other night. But not the boss.’

  ‘Names?’ the commander demanded to know.

  With the eagerness of a man endeavouring to save his own skin, Hopkins said, ‘There was Dave MacTavish and Ned Freeman.’ With a furtive glance in my direction he added, ‘And Squinty Baker – the one with the funny eyes.’

  ‘Is his first name Terry or Jerry?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunno. Everyone just calls him Squinty.’

  ‘Tell us what happened,’ Greenway said.

  ‘Look,’ Hopkins pleaded. ‘If I tell you how it was, how they told it to me, will you get me off the murder charge?’

  ‘Only if you’re found to be telling the truth. I can’t do anything until we know for sure.’