by Graham Ison
We waited an hour for a fingerprint officer to arrive, and he spent another hour spreading powder over all the likely surfaces. He then spent ten minutes explaining to a disgruntled Mrs Ives the best way of removing it.
‘Perhaps you’d let Linda Mitchell have the results,’ said Dave.
‘Who?’ asked the fingerprint officer.
Dave sighed and gave him Linda’s details.
SIXTEEN
On Tuesday morning I received the ballistics examiner’s report. She was prepared to testify that the rounds that were removed from the Richmond Park tree were a match with those taken from the bodies of Eberhardt, Schmidt and Adekunle. It looked as though Cyril Jefferson had witnessed our killer engaging in some target practice prior to carrying out the murders. But whether the Volkswagen Polo with the broken rear nearside window that Jefferson had spotted leaving the park was the murderer’s car remained to be seen. But as he’d admitted, he might have got the make of the vehicle wrong. So far nothing had come in reporting a sighting of a vehicle matching his description.
The ballistics examiner had the foresight to mention the legislation that had followed the Dunblane massacre, and her report went on to express the tentative view that the two-two calibre pistol was most likely to have been illegally obtained. Or had even been smuggled in from abroad. Finally, she mentioned that the rounds did not match any found at other scenes of crime.
I walked through to the incident room.
‘Colin, send out a circulation to all forces asking for details of any reports regarding the theft of a two-two pistol. Within, say, the last two months.’ I held out little hope of a positive reply. If the weapon had been illegally held, or if the loser was a villain, it was unlikely that the theft would have been reported to the police.
‘Right, sir.’ Wilberforce turned to his computer and announced that the message had been sent before I’d left the room. All we had to do now was to wait.
At two o’clock that afternoon, Wilberforce came into my office with a computer printout.
‘A report from West Midlands Police, sir. It doesn’t mention any stolen weapon, but their Birmingham East Local Policing Unit received a report regarding the curious behaviour of a man who applied to enrol in their club. Apparently he was never seen again after his first visit.’
‘When was this, Colin?’
‘The report was lodged at the Stechford police station on Wednesday the twenty-fifth of June, sir.’
‘The date would be right if the same man was the man that Jefferson saw,’ I said. ‘And no other reports have come in from anywhere else?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I suppose I’d better look into it,’ I said, ‘and that means a trip to Birmingham.’ I was, however, convinced that I’d be wasting my time. But, as I’ve frequently mentioned, such matters have to be followed up.
I waited until the following day to make sure that we’d not received any reports about stolen weapons or other examples of odd behaviour, and Dave and I set out for Birmingham by road. As usual it was tricky getting out of central London, but once on the M1 we had a reasonably clear run.
We arrived at Stechford police station in Station Road just before midday.
‘I’m DCI Brock, Metropolitan, Sergeant,’ I said to the officer on counter duty. ‘I telephoned earlier to say that I’d be calling in.’
‘Come through, sir,’ said the sergeant, lifting the flap of the counter. ‘The inspector’s office is this way. He is expecting you.’
The inspector already had the report on his desk.
‘Harry Brock, DCI, Metropolitan,’ I said, shaking hands. ‘This is Dave Poole, my sergeant.’
‘What is your interest in this strange business, Mr Brock?’ asked the inspector.
I explained about the triple murder we were investigating and that the ballistics report had indicated the likelihood of a target pistol having been used.
‘I understand from your email that a man applied to join a shooting club up here,’ I continued, ‘but was not seen again.’
‘That’s so. The secretary of a local gun club reported that a man had applied for membership, but that he disappeared once he’d fired a few rounds,’ said the inspector. ‘He didn’t take up membership and he didn’t return.’
‘Do you have a name and address for this mysterious gun club applicant, Inspector?’
‘He gave his name as Derek Ford and the address where he was staying is a lodging house in Sheldon.’
Derek Ford was the name that Donald Ives’ lodger had given. This was beginning to look interesting.
‘Sheldon is near the airport, isn’t it, sir?’ asked Dave. It wasn’t immediately clear to me why he’d asked that question.
‘Yes, about three miles or so,’ said the inspector.
‘Was the secretary able to give you any more information about this man Ford?’ I asked.
‘Only that he was satisfied as to the man’s identity, sir. Gun clubs are supposed to be very strict about membership and they’re obliged by law to demand documentary proof. Ford apparently produced a rent book for the address in Sheldon. I have the details here. Personally I think they should’ve asked for more than a rent book, but as he didn’t take the matter any further I don’t suppose it matters.’
‘I think I’d’ve asked for more than just a rent book, too,’ I agreed.
The inspector shrugged, apparently at the failure of the club to demand proper identification. He gave me the address at which Ford had rented a room, together with a copy of the original report. ‘We made an enquiry at the address, but weren’t able to find out any more about him than I’ve already told you. We had no other address for him and there was little more we could do. After all, he applied to join the club but then changed his mind. It’s not really a matter for the police. But in view of your circulation about the murders in London and possible stolen firearms, I thought it might be of interest to you.’ He smiled. ‘We have quite a lot of much more important things to do here than follow up things like that, Mr Brock,’ he added.
‘I’m sure you do,’ I said, ‘and thank you for your help so far. I’ll visit Ford’s address in Sheldon, in case there is any more to be learned. Perhaps you’d give my sergeant directions.’
‘Would it be easier if I sent a local officer with you, or do you know this part of Birmingham?’
‘A local officer would be very helpful,’ I said. ‘I’m a stranger here.’
‘I’ll make sure he’s in plain clothes,’ said the inspector, and used his telephone to make the necessary arrangement.
Mrs Patel, Derek Ford’s erstwhile landlady, was a tall, slender woman attired in a sari. She gazed somewhat suspiciously at the three of us. ‘Are you wanting rooms?’
‘No, madam,’ I said. ‘We’re police officers.’ It was a statement that did little to lessen her suspicion.
‘What is the problem?’ demanded Mrs Patel, maintaining a firm grip on the edge of the front door. ‘We are all law-abiding persons in this house. No drugs, no bad people, no loose women.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Mrs Patel,’ I said, ‘but I was hoping that you could tell me something about a Mr Derek Ford who, I understand, stayed here for a while.’
‘Ah, Mr Ford, yes. A policeman was here about him a while ago.’ Mrs Patel opened the front door wide and invited the three of us into her sitting room. ‘He was only here the once, you know. A bit of a strange fellow.’
‘Really? But I thought he took lodgings here,’ I said, even though I knew that he hadn’t stayed.
‘That is quite correct.’ Mrs Patel took a book from a side table and flicked through the pages. ‘Yes, here we are. Mr Ford took a room here on the second of June, but he didn’t even stay for that one night. He paid for a week, but never came back here again.’ She glanced up. ‘I told the other policeman who came here all about it.’
‘Did this Mr Ford leave anything here, Mrs Patel?’ asked Dave. ‘Any luggage or other belongings?’
> ‘No. Once he had paid me, he said that he would go to New Street railway station and collect his bags from the left luggage office, but he never came back. Most odd behaviour. To tell you the truth I didn’t know whether to let the room again.’
‘Did this Mr Ford have a car, Mrs Patel?’ asked Dave.
‘Not that I saw,’ said the woman. ‘I certainly did not see any such vehicle outside when he called here. Anyway, he said he was going to the railway station to collect baggage, so perhaps he came by train.’
You should’ve been a detective, Mrs Patel, I thought.
We obtained a description of the errant Derek Ford from Mrs Patel, but it wasn’t much help. An ordinary man in his mid-twenties was all she could tell us.
We next paid a visit to the gun club in search of the secretary who had told the police about Derek Ford and his rather odd disappearance.
Fortunately for us, both the secretary and the armourer were there when we called. That certainly saved us another journey from London.
‘What can you tell me about this man Derek Ford who applied to join your club, but didn’t pursue it?’ I asked, once introductions had been effected.
‘He seemed a responsible sort of fellow, Chief Inspector,’ said the armourer. ‘I asked him a few questions about his standard of shooting, and he told me he was ex-army and knew all about guns.’
‘Did he produce any evidence of that?’
‘No, I’m afraid not. Not evidence of having been a soldier. Anyway, I took him out to the range and he fired quite competently. He obviously knew how to handle a weapon, but he did admit to being unfamiliar with the pistol he was firing.’
‘What was the weapon, sir?’ asked Dave.
‘A Rohm Twinmaster Action CO2-charged target air pistol,’ said the armourer promptly. ‘It’s a German job and very reliable.’
‘As a matter of interest,’ said the secretary, ‘may I ask why officers from Scotland Yard are so interested in this man? We reported it to the local police, but they didn’t seem to attach too much importance to it.’
‘They were probably right not to do so,’ I said. ‘But it’s just possible that Ford might be able to help us with our enquiries into a matter we are investigating in London.’ I had no grounds for saying that, at least not yet, but in the course of an investigation as complex as a triple murder anything might help. Even so, I decided against mentioning the murders to either of the officials. The temptation to earn a few pounds by speaking to the press about a visit from Scotland Yard homicide officers would be too much for them to keep to themselves. That sort of publicity was more likely to hinder than help.
‘What documentary evidence of identity did you demand of Mr Ford?’ asked Dave, a question not designed to suggest that the officials had acted competently. And he knew the answer anyway.
‘He produced a rent book for an address in Sheldon,’ said the secretary. ‘It’s a local address, and he told us his landlady was a Mrs Patel.’
‘We know. We’ve interviewed her,’ said Dave. ‘But did you visit the address or telephone her for confirmation?’
‘Er, no,’ said the secretary. ‘The rent book seemed genuine enough, and I looked up Mrs Patel in the phone book. The address tallied with the one on the rent book.’
‘I see.’ Dave paused long enough to imply unspoken criticism of such a cavalier approach to security, especially where firearms were concerned. ‘Can you describe Ford?’
‘About twenty-five or so, I suppose,’ said the armourer. ‘Five-ten, perhaps even six foot. Neat haircut, clean shaven and dressed in a blazer and light-coloured slacks. Oh, and he was wearing a tie that looked as though it was a regimental one.’
‘Any idea which regiment?’ asked Dave.
‘No, I didn’t recognize it. I was in the Royal Air Force Regiment, but it looked like an army tie. On second thoughts I suppose it could have been an old school tie.’
‘As I understand it, the reason you reported this man to the police was that having applied to join, he changed his mind and never came back.’ I was beginning to think that Dave and I had wasted our time in travelling to Birmingham. Except for the coincidence of the name Derek Ford.
‘There was a bit more to it than that,’ said the armourer. ‘When I took him out to the range, I handed him the Rohm air pistol I mentioned, but he asked if we had any automatic pistols he could fire, like a Walther or a Beretta. I explained about the legislation that followed the Dunblane massacre, but he didn’t seem to know anything about it. He said he’d been abroad for a long time.’
‘And that was definitely the last you saw of him, was it?’
‘Yes, he never came back. I did suggest that if he wanted to practise with an automatic, he’d have to go to another country. I suggested Germany. There are a lot of gun clubs there using all manner of weapons.’
‘Did this Ford character have a car, sir?’ asked Dave.
‘Not that I know of,’ said the secretary, ‘but I don’t have a view of the road from my office.’
‘Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen,’ I said. The armourer’s suggestion that the disappearing Derek Ford might try Germany for practice made me wonder if he had done so and if any weapons had been reported stolen there. But that was something I’d have to take up with Horst Fischer.
In order to round off our Birmingham enquiry, Dave and I called at New Street railway station.
The clerk in the left luggage office greeted us by grumbling about pressure of work, the bloody-mindedness of the public and Network Rail, the organization that managed this particular part of the railway. I don’t know what he thought the police could do about it.
That out of the way, the clerk condescended to thumb through a couple of books and told us that there was no record of any one called Derek Ford depositing any baggage in June or at any time afterwards. But I got the impression that the left-luggage clerk was not the most conscientious of record keepers.
We returned the West Midlands policeman to his station and made for London. We were on the M6 before Dave mentioned this latest twist in our investigation.
‘It strikes me that this Derek Ford took the room with Mrs Patel so that he’d have an address in the Birmingham area if the gun club checked. I don’t think he ever intended to stay there.’
‘It certainly looks like it, Dave. Although it seems as though they didn’t bother to follow it up, or ask any pertinent questions.’
‘And that is why I asked the local police the question about the airport, guv. I reckon that Ford established himself as a resident at somewhere near the gun club to provide the secretary with bona fide proof of identity, but actually intended to travel to the club from wherever he lived. In the event he didn’t bother to join and that was possibly because he couldn’t get his hands on an automatic.’
‘But he did suggest to Mrs Patel that he’d be going to New Street station to pick up his baggage.’
‘I know, guv, but he didn’t, did he? So far, all we can be certain of is that he’s a liar.’
‘All we have to do now is find out his permanent address, if he has one,’ I added gloomily. The task of trying to find a man named Derek Ford somewhere in the United Kingdom was a mammoth one.
‘If Derek Ford is his real name,’ said Dave.
‘And if he hasn’t taken up the club armourer’s suggestion of going to Germany,’ I said.
‘But at least we know that there was a Derek Ford staying in Isleworth until quite recently,’ said Dave. ‘So he could be a Londoner, if it’s the same guy.’
Waiting until Mr Martin, the shopkeeper, had locked up and left for home, the man calling himself Derek Ford made his way downstairs. He tried the communicating door to the general stores on the ground floor and was delighted to find that it was unlocked.
Spending a few minutes searching the crowded shelves, he eventually found what he was looking for: a claw hammer and a jemmy.
Returning to the second flight of stairs he took off his jacket and b
egan the laborious task of removing every other tread. In the event it wasn’t too difficult; the wood was old and even rotten in some places. It was positively criminal, renting out a dangerous place like this, he thought cynically. Finally, he eased one of the remaining treads, but left it in place so that it would creak if anyone stepped on it.
When he’d finished, he took the tools he’d borrowed back to the shop, left them on the counter, and returned to his room, carefully avoiding the missing treads while holding on to the rickety banister rail.
Once back in his room, he checked his automatic pistol and loaded it, just as he’d been taught to do at Sandhurst. Not that he thought he’d need to use it. He was planning to cross the Channel in the next few days and eventually make for Brazil, as Ronnie Biggs of the infamous Great Train Robbery had done in 1970. But he was labouring under the mistaken belief that he couldn’t be extradited from there.
We arrived at Curtis Green at about five, having stopped off at Toddington Services on the M1 motorway for a belated bite to eat.
Assuming for the moment that Derek Ford was a strong suspect for our three murders, I sat in my office for an hour pondering the problem of finding him. There were quite a few channels of enquiry open to me, among them the General Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages; the Passport Office; and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. Not that the latter would have recorded details of a broken window on a Volkswagen Golf. Unfortunately. And that was assuming that the VW Cyril Jefferson had seen was being driven by the killer.
But each of those sources was likely to throw up a fair number of men named Derek Ford, even those in their mid-twenties, and it would take days if not months to interview each of them because they could be anywhere in the country. And even then we might not find him if the name he’d given was not his real name. It was a possibility that Dave had suggested on our way back from Birmingham. In fact the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that he had used a false name. No murderer in his right mind would apply for membership of a gun club and use his real name when approaching its officials. That said, I’ve always believed that murderers are not of sound mind anyway.
