The DCI Morton Box Set

by Sean Campbell

  'No, sir, she didn't need it at work, and when she come home, I always let her in.' His English began to break down under stress, becoming fractured and disjointed.

  'Who would want to kill her?' Morton preferred to be direct. Beating around the bush simply wasn't his style.

  'Nobody, sir.' It soon became clear that Jaison knew nothing of value. Morton could have tipped off immigration – the man was in the UK illegally – but his conscience would not allow him to be party to the deportation of a man who had just lost the love of his life.

  Instead he ventured into the cramped living areas of the apartment to execute the search warrant. It yielded little, but he took her mobile and her laptop for the IT department to investigate. Data storage devices often proved valuable data mines in criminal investigations – Morton hoped that this occasion would be one of those times.

  ***

  There had been no DNA at the One Eyed Dog crime other than that of the victim. The Scene of Crime Officers had been hopeful that the gloves found in the bin might yield epithelial cells. The skin was a rich source of DNA, and would have made it easy to put the gun in the hand of its owner.

  There were a number of fingerprints at the scene, which was no surprise for a public thoroughfare that was used by the residents of an adjoining flat block.

  A few fingerprints were found on the fencing, as if people had taken to leaning on the wall in the alleyway. The landlord had explained that since the smoking ban indoors had taken effect, the smokers had taken to loitering in the alleyway to get their nicotine hit.

  The sheer number of prints would make heavy work of processing the scene. In all, over two hundred prints were lifted, but not all of those would be unique.

  It took a while to process fingerprints. The lifting had to be done carefully, and then every fingerprint had to be individually scanned into the system. Once that was done it was all down to the computer. The first stage of processing the computer would undertake would be to compare the fingerprints to each other to determine how many unique individuals were at the scene. One finger from each of these people would then be compared with the Police Fingerprint Database.

  The database was extensive, as every suspect, whether or not they were then charged, was printed and their data added into the system. With many crimes being repeat offences the database proved immensely valuable.

  It wasn't exhaustive, however, as there was no general requirement for the public to be fingerprinted. This gap meant that first-time offenders, as well as those coming from outside the UK, would not be on the system, and the prints would be flagged as unknown.

  There were thirty-two unique individuals, and virtually all of them were unknown. Of the few individuals who were on the system, none had a record for violence so there was no prime suspect.

  Chapter 20: Hope

  'Dear Mr. Murphy, I am delighted to inform you that we wish to offer you the position of editor-in-chief.'

  Edwin blinked, and reread that line again to make sure he hadn't imagined it. The letter arrived that morning by snail mail, postmarked two weeks earlier. He had been offered the Vancouver job. It had seemed an ideal move when he was a single man escaping a loveless marriage and a lonely London existence. Now that he was a homeowner again, with full custody of his little girl, the rose-tinted view had begun to wear off.

  Edwin didn't know anyone in Canada. It was a lovely place to visit, but visiting a place and living there were two entirely different propositions. He would talk it over with Chelsea of course, even if she didn't really understand. He'd probably have to discuss it with Eleanor's parents too, though how they could object when Eleanor had been planning to take Chelsea to New York for work herself Edwin didn't know.

  At least Edwin didn't have to rush his reply. The Canadians had given him a thirty-day grace period to make his decision, and he wouldn't inform them until it was necessary to do so. He had other irons in the fire, and if they didn't come off he might just take the role to avoid a protracted period of unemployment.

  ***

  There were fingerprints all over the big bags in the alley. Not only did the One Eyed Dog use the alley, but local residents did too, so the fingerprints could belong to virtually any of them.

  Morton zoned in on a pair of gloves found near the shotgun. After flipping them inside out, the forensics team had been able to find several smudged partial prints inside, but there were no epithelial cells so DNA was out.

  Gunshot residue was present on the outside of the gloves, but it had been commingled with rubbish so it was impossible to exclude the possibility that it was transfer.

  The partial fingerprints from the glove were a match to a record, but the file wasn't readily available. It was marked as having been sealed by judicial order, which probably meant that the fingerprint belonged to a juvenile defendant. Juvenile prints were routinely expunged from the database, but sometimes the file managed to evade the recycle bin. Morton was, for once, thankful for the IT department's hideous inefficiency.

  It took Morton's pet prosecutor, Kieran O'Connor, considerable effort to persuade a family law judge to unseal the file. If defence counsel had been present, the judge probably would have sided with them, but it was an unopposed application with only the prosecutor and the judge in the courtroom at the time. In the end, it was the connection to an open murder investigation that swung it, and Morton was soon sat at his desk with a Starbucks coffee, reading about the owner of the print.

  The print belonged to a Barry Fitzgerald. He was resident in London, but council records confirmed he was not local to the Caledonian Road area. It was therefore unlikely that the presence of his fingerprints on the glove had been put there innocently. Still, without further corroboration it was highly speculative, and David Morton wanted to approach him with kid gloves on. If he was the killer he was obviously armed, and therefore dangerous.

  Chapter 21: Suffering

  'Hello, handsome. You got a parking permit yet?' Jayne joked as Yosef walked through the front doors of the hospital. She was Zachariah's nursing assistant, and Yosef had been on first-name terms with her since Zach's first visit.

  Yosef shook his head sadly, but did manage a weak smile.

  'Routine visit?' Zachariah had regular visits to the hospital, designed to monitor his deterioration. They say that at rock bottom, the only way is up. But Yosef seemed to be bouncing along the bottom.

  'No. Not today.'

  Zachariah was doing well, compared to most Tay-Sachs sufferers.

  He couldn't crawl, sit or turn over unassisted. He was registered blind, had a severe hearing impairment, and was slipping into permanent paralysis. His mental development was slow, but he was alive and in relatively little pain.

  Like all victims of infantile Tay-Sachs, Zach suffered from infections often. This one wasn't serious – the antibiotics were working. But that might not be true the next time, or the time after that.

  It was the realisation that Zachariah would be taken from her that drove Yosef's wife, Zachariah's mother, to take her life shortly before the baby's first birthday.

  In her suicide note she decried the helplessness and desperation that had meant that the whole family was victimised by the disease. Yosef's father often said that the measure of a man isn't his success in life, but in how he picks himself up after failure. In that regard Yosef proved himself a worthy son. He had endured so many knock-backs, and never once given up on Zachariah.

  When his wife had fallen to pieces as Zachariah's condition worsened, he had continued to provide financially, as well as nursing the boy all hours of the day and night.

  Soon it would become his duty to go one step further in relation to the boy. He would not allow him to suffer for years before an infection finally got to him. Yosef would sooner send him to join his forefathers in heaven. This much faith he still had. No god could fail to provide in death for a boy who had suffered so much in life.

  ***

  'Barry Fitzgerald! This is the police.
Open up,' Morton called out, and then paused to listen for any movement within. In his experience the guilty often fell straight into fight or flight mode. Adrenaline started to pump through their system, and they often ran out of the rear door, or tried to escape through a window or fire escape.

  Deputies had been posted outside to watch for any activity, each with a fuzzy e-fit.

  Inside, Barry was quietly grabbing a knife from the kitchen. He knew the police would barge in at any moment, and he would only get one chance to get past them. He had stuffed all his spare money into his trouser leg pocket, and was pulling a second layer of clothing on as he heard the crunch that indicated they were breaking the door in.

  On the third crunch the door swung inwards, coming off its hinges and hitting the floor with a fierce thud. Barry was crouched underneath the breakfast bar in the kitchenette, and watched the policeman enter in the reflective microwave door above him. When the man turned to go into the bedroom Barry threw the knife towards him and ran out of the door. He heard the man yell, and knew he had hit his target.

  The policeman would be radioing for backup at any moment, and Barry had to make good his escape. He knew the police would be on both the front and the back door of the flat block, so he went up one flight before knocking on the door of another flat. As soon as the occupant opened the door he punched her in the jaw, making her fly backwards and land, unconscious, with a thud.

  His victim was eighty-two, and hard of hearing. Her television was on maximum volume, and that masked the sound to the adjacent flats. Barry shut the door behind him quietly, and then made himself at home. He knew the police would search the surrounding streets first; it was the logical thing to do. He didn't know where he would go next, but they'd be watching his flat now.

  Stripping off the extra layer of clothes he had donned to disguise his appearance should the policeman ID him, he flicked the television over to "Countdown" and mentally played along with the numbers game.

  ***

  Blood was slowly dripping out of Morton's leg where he had been stabbed. He had been smart enough to leave the knife in his leg where it had struck him, but he knew his body was going into shock. That was as dangerous as the blood loss, if not more so.

  Out of instinct, Morton had radioed for help immediately, but knew that the men posted on the doors would stay there to prevent the suspect from escaping rather than assist him. He had trained them himself, and it was what he would do.

  Morton's man at the front door radioed back. A medical team was en route, estimated time of arrival, ten minutes.

  By the time they had arrived, Morton had passed out. He awoke four hours later in the Royal London, with twenty-six stitches in his upper leg. The wound had required a blood transfusion, and he was still woozy when he came to. The first question on his lips was not how bad his injuries were, but 'Did we get him?'

  'No, sir, I'm afraid he escaped.'

  Morton let the darkness envelope him once again, and hoped that the response had been a figment of his imagination.

  ***

  Barry didn't leave the old woman's flat for several hours. He gagged and bound the original occupant, and left her in the bathroom to prevent her calling the cops anytime soon. He wouldn't leave her there for too long; his plan was to tip off the police anonymously when he was as far away as he could be.

  The flat had yielded a few useful items. Breakfast bars were now stuffed inside an overcoat that fitted Barry neatly. Several hundred pounds in cash was also a massive boon, and an unexpected one at that.

  The old lady had also been mercifully vain. In her bathroom was a full stock of hair dye. Barry's efforts wouldn't win any design awards, but the peroxide drained the brown pigment from his hair in virtually no time at all. Judicious use of scissors cropped his locks to alter his face shape, and a slow swagger altered his gait.

  The flat wasn't large, and with the real owner tied up in the bathroom. Barry was left to meander around the lounge and bedroom. Fortunately the lounge had a large window with a clear view of the rear entrance to the building. The police were still out there, and didn't show any signs of moving.

  It was six hours before Barry decided to leave. He decided against the rear exit, as leaving via the back door was too obvious. With his changed appearance in place, he decided that his best option was to hide in plain sight. With that in mind he walked straight out of the front door. Sure enough, a number of police were in the area, but they appeared to be the beat cops that periodically strolled around the neighbourhood rather than the Met police who Barry knew would be looking for him.

  He wasn't sure where to go. Friends and family were out; he'd be found in no time.

  He could flee London entirely, but eventually his face would appear on "Crimewatch", and someone would ID him. If he did leave then he would have to either take his car or risk public transport.

  The former option was clearly a poor choice. There was no doubt that the police would have put out an alert on his number plates, and a stolen car would be even easier to find. Besides, Barry didn't know how to hotwire a modern car. It wasn't quite as simple as it had been when he had boosted cars in his youth. His conviction for teen joyriding was long past, and that skill set had atrophied over the years.

  Public transport would allow him to hide in a crowd. Adverts on the tube proclaimed boldly that over a million people entered London by public transport every single day. With that large a crowd, it would certainly be possible to disappear.

  If he was going to go on the run for good he'd need new papers. Lord Lucan might have managed to disappear for good back in 'Seventy-four, but that was before the advent of DNA. If he was picked up for any reason whatsoever it would be child's play for the police to link the crimes back to him. Leaving the country was always an option, but many countries now had extradition treaties with the UK to haul criminals back home to face justice. If he stayed within Europe then Interpol could come after him with a European Arrest Warrant. To leave he'd need a false passport to travel on, not to mention the language skills to help him survive wherever he wound up.

  It simply wasn't practical to run like that, so Barry decided to stay relatively local. He knew London well. He would adopt an accent of some kind, perhaps Welsh like his mother's, and he'd keep changing his appearance to muddy the waters.

  The biggest problem for Barry, at least initially, was to find somewhere to stay. He might be able to stomach living rough, but the homeless were often picked up by the police under vague vagrancy laws that criminalised being homeless. If that happened, and they printed him, it would be game over.

  Instead he needed somewhere to lie low. A budget chain like Travelodge or Premier Inn would be perfect. The bigger chains wouldn't bat an eye at someone staying in their room for a week straight. It would give him the chance to hide until the initial enthusiasm of the manhunt began to die down. It wouldn't take long. There would soon be another criminal, more interesting to the media, that would take the limelight. There would still be coverage but it would be far less intense.

  The problem with the budget national chains was that they would all require a credit or debit card; cash would raise too many eyebrows. Barry didn't intend to make use of the incidentals, but that wouldn't stop them wanting to ring fence funds on a card just in case. He might be able to kick up a fuss and give a cash deposit instead, but at best they'd think he was a pimp, and at worst they'd call the police for suspicious behaviour.

  A smaller hotel or bed and breakfast might be happy with cash, but Barry would have to make a show of being a tourist and leaving each day. It just wasn't normal to hide away in a B&B for a week, especially not alone. Somewhere with free Internet would also be handy. Barry would need to check in with his darknet contact at some point to make sure that he reciprocated.

  Barry decided his best bet was to start in south London away from the big hotels in the centre, and look for a medium-sized business which would take cash and not ask too many questions.

&nb
sp; Chapter 22: Done and Dusted?

  The Deepak murder hit the papers the next morning. A woman had been shot in Caledonian Road, point blank, with a sawn-off shotgun. Her body had been dumped under bin bags in an alley, and the police were in pursuit of a suspect in connection with the murder.

  If Edwin had still been the editor of The Impartial, he would have found out about the news before it broke, but he was now reduced to finding out about it in his old newspaper. It was an odd feeling to be relegated to reading the news rather than writing it. He felt out of the loop, and oddly exposed.

  His initial link to Eleanor's murder was now dead. The police would have a hard time tracking him without a tangible link to the victims. There was the possibility Barry would be caught, or they'd check Vanhi's computer, but at best they could only link the deaths to an anonymous darknet account. Reasonable doubt seemed pretty certain should Edwin ever end up in the dock.

  The issue for Edwin was that media interest would now intensify greatly in both Barry's run from the law, and the life of the victim. If he was unlucky an overly enthusiastic journalist would begin to dig too deep. On the other hand if Barry were to disappear permanently with no sightings of him, then the trail would run cold. Perhaps it was time to delve into the darknet messages once more, and add a further stumbling block for the police to trip over before they came anywhere near the root cause of the trouble.

  Edwin's biggest risk of exposure would be if Barry was caught and allowed the police to link the previous deaths together. He had made the error of getting his own hit out of the way first, which would always implicate whoever benefited from that death. He had to make sure the police didn't suspect the kills were linked, or at the least had to eliminate witnesses who knew enough to point the police in the right direction. Around 170 murders were committed each year in London, as well as a huge number of deaths that went under the radar. It would take the police extraordinary luck to correctly link the incidents that Edwin was involved in.