by Michael Kerr
The line went dead. Nigel waved Parkinson away as he approached bearing the malt in a cut glass tumbler. He picked up the out-of-place bag and walked briskly from the room into the corridor and entered the toilets. Went into a stall and quickly unbuttoned his shirt again and removed the wire from where it was taped to his chest. He then unzipped the bag, transferred the cash to his pockets and put his mobile phone and the equipment he had been wearing into it. Left the stall and pushed the bag into the large waste bin, ensuring that it was covered by paper hand towels.
Leaving the club by an emergency exit that would no doubt trigger an alarm; he strode quickly up the alley and turned right on to Bedford Street. It was broad daylight, and he did not feel in any physical danger, just fearful that the police may somehow still be able to monitor his movements and prevent him from making the payoff without intervention that could result in his total ruination. The farther he walked along the crowded pavement, the safer he felt.
The phone rang again as he neared The Piazza.
“So far, so good, Nige. Next comes the tricky part. I want you to get a cab to the Natural History Museum. When you get there, wait outside until I call back.”
DC Dave Brent felt uncomfortable in his best suit and tie. He was more used to wearing sweaters and jeans. He was sitting in the next room to Villiers, nursing a glass of ginger ale and hoping that the guy would not stay for long. These gentlemen’s clubs were – as far as Dave was concerned – frequented by the rich and privileged, who all spoke like Charlie boy, and wore wristwatches that would cost him the best part of a year’s salary. Even the bloody waiters were posh and snooty. They could smell a mongrel among the pedigrees. He was in a universe that was apart from the one he belonged to and felt at ease in. He had a line of sight on the subject through the open double doors. Villiers had been giving them foreknowledge of his intended movements, and Grizzly Adams had made the necessary arrangements for a plainclothes officer to gain entry to the club. Villiers was not advised that he was under twenty-four-hour close surveillance. Matt had not wanted him to be more nervous than necessary, and did not trust the man, who after all was a politician; a breed who, from experience, he knew had as close a bond with truth as oil does with water.
Dave’s radar went to red alert when an old Jeeves-type went over to Villiers, who took a mobile phone from the tray that was held out to him. The politician took it and just gazed at it until it rang, then started talking. Shit! He watched as Villiers furtively removed the small, disc microphone that had been taped to his chest.
Dave whispered into the mike that was secreted beneath the right lapel of his jacket. A two-man team were in a van nearby, and had been monitoring and recording everything that Villiers said, until with a sudden crackle, white noise replaced the voices.
“He just ripped the Mike off,” Dave said.
“Great,” Harold Quigley said. “We should have had a camera on you, and we could have watched him. “Now what?”
“He’s on the move. I’ll follow him,” Dave said. “Patch me through to DI Barnes in SCU, and tell Errol what’s happening. I need him to follow in the car if Villiers tries to evade us on foot.”
Dave waited until Villiers had come out of the toilet and left the club by the rear, then followed, not daring to take the time to see what he had done with the bag, which he was no longer carrying, but informing the officers in the van that the toilets may be a pickup point.
Within sixty seconds there was a conference line open, on which Dave, Errol, Matt, and the two operatives in the mobile surveillance van could communicate with each other. Other officers were posted at the front and rear of the club.
Dave led them to near The Piazza, and was then picked up by Errol when Villiers grabbed a cab.
Now in his Discovery and being talked in, Matt arranged for an officer to check out the toilet in the Crompton Club. He was not surprised to be told that the holdall, complete with the GPS tracking device and the wire, but minus the money, had been dumped. This was fine. The blackmailer would think he had every chance of collecting the cash. All they had to do was remain unobserved, and they would collar him.
“Villiers just exited the cab outside the Natural History Museum,” Dave said. “We’re driving past him now. He’s just standing on the pavement. Looks as if he’s waiting for someone, or for further instructions.”
The phone rang again and Nigel answered. “Yes?”
“It’s nearly a done deal, Nige. I want you to go into the museum, browse like a tourist for thirty minutes, then go into the gents on the ground floor and put the money in a backpack you’ll find in the first stall. When you’ve done it, flush the toilet and walk. Make your way up to the first floor and don’t come down for another thirty minutes. Is there anything I’ve said that you don’t understand?”
“No.”
“So repeat it.”
“I look at exhibits for thirty minutes, then go into the toilet, put the money in a backpack, and go up to the first floor for another half an hour.”
“That’s it, Nige. And unlike you, I have a little integrity. The page that your name and other information are on gets burned, and you never hear from me again.”
“If you come back for more, I’ll know better than to deal with you,” Nigel found the courage to say.
“Don’t worry. I don’t push my luck. There are plenty more of Marsha’s ex-clients to go to. This might have been a wake-up call for you, Nige. The experience should teach you to be more careful in future. Maybe keeping your dick on a tight rein would be a good idea. Those little fellers can get you into all kinds of mischief.”
Nigel walked up the steps to the enormous arched entrance of the Victorian building that housed antiquities of the natural world. He had not been inside it since his schooldays, and yet the intervening decades seemed to have sped by. The grand facility was a constant in an ever-changing world. If time could stand still, then surely it was in places like this where it let life pass it by.
“He has entered the museum,” Dave said from where Errol had stopped a hundred yards along the road to let him get out and walk back. “I repeat, he has entered the museum.”
“Follow him, Dave,” Matt said over the link that was fed into the ear piece Dave was wearing. “We still need to stay on the money. I’ll have another officer in there with you in five minutes.”
With every exit covered, Matt was quietly confident that they would get a result. After half an hour, Villiers went into the ground floor toilets. Came out after less than ninety seconds and took the stairs up to the first floor.
Matt didn’t send anyone in to check, in case it was being watched. Another thirty minutes passed. Villiers left the museum and was tailed.
Another ten minutes crawled by. A slim young guy came out of the gents wearing a scruffy – rather than distressed – leather jerkin, cargo pants, scuffed trainers, a baseball cap pulled low to hide his eyes, and a backpack. He had not entered while they had been there.
Everyone was in place. Matt, Pete and DC Mark Jones were within ten yards of him. Matt saw the glint of gold and felt his muscles surge with adrenaline at the sight of the embossed ring on the guy’s finger. It was Wolf Man.
Nothing goes to plan. As they were about to move in, a party of school kids rushed into the immediate area, and one of the teachers in charge of the party brought them to a halt in front of the fossilised skeleton of some big-toothed variety of dinosaur.
Matt could not take the risk of the killer grabbing a child to hold as hostage. He did not intend to complicate matters by having a kid held at knife or gun point by a known killer. As it turned out, he had no need to worry. Their quarry pushed his way through the crowd and headed for the main door, slyly looking about him and quickening his pace. He reached the door and, as he opened it, they moved in fast and took him down hard, onto his face, stretched out with Pete’s knee in the small of his back. Matt held the muzzle of his pistol against the man’s temple and told him to keep still, while
Pete handcuffed him. Mark frisked him and found a mobile phone, but no weapon. The money was in the backpack.
“Read him his rights,” Matt said to Pete as Mark roughly hoisted the man to his feet.
“All I did was pick up this backpack for a guy,” their prisoner said as he was frog-marched down to where a police van was already pulling to the kerb on Matt’s phoned instructions. “I don’t even know what the fuck’s in it.”
“What’s your name?” Matt asked the unshaven man, who with no doubt whatsoever he believed to be the merciless killer of at least four women.
“Brad Pitt.”
Matt smiled. Their prisoner was gaunt, his eyes heavy-lidded, and small tics caused his head to pull off to the right every few seconds, and for his shoulders to hitch up and down. He couldn’t have kept still if his life depended on it. He was hurting, in need of a hit.
“Okay, wise guy,” Matt said before closing the cage door in the side of the van. “We’ll talk later, when you need a fix so bad that your skin is crawling and stomach cramps are beginning to make you feel like you haven’t taken a dump in a month.”
A muscle began to dance in ‘Brad’s’ left cheek. His pasty face paled to a shade lighter than his off-white trainers, and his tongue flicked out to moisten thin, dry lips.
“You can’t hold me. I haven’t done nuthin’,” he shouted from the bench seat that a uniformed officer had told him to sit on.
After being processed and refusing to give any details to a burly desk sergeant, who would have loved to go to work on the crackhead’s kidneys with his fists until he pissed blood, but didn’t, Brad was put in an interview room and left to work out how long he could go before the pain really set in and the craving made him start to climb mental walls.
Matt and Pete strolled into the room holding cups of machine coffee. They sat in chairs opposite Brad, and Matt gave the uniform standing inside the door the nod to leave, while Pete unwrapped two new audio cassette tapes, labelled them and inserted them into the twin-deck machine. He started recording and stated the time, date, place, those that were present, and their names and rank.
“How’re you doing, Brad?” Matt asked in a casual manner, before taking a sip of the weak and gritty coffee. He was in no hurry. The twenty-something prime suspect was going nowhere. Matt put the cup down, took out his cigarettes and placed one between his lips. He fingered his Zippo lighter, rolled the wheel with his thumb and sparked a blue-yellow flame into life, then snapped the lid shut to extinguish it, without lighting the cigarette. He wanted to smoke. A voice in his mind told him to; urged him to ignite the tip of the cigarette and draw the blend of mellow but deadly fumes down into his lungs. He resisted, and a part of him was smug at his new-found ability to choose not to.
“My name is Terry McCall. And I haven’t done nuthin’,” the junkie mumbled as he found a vestige of fingernail – that had not been bitten down to just above the cuticle by his small, busy teeth – and gnawed it free from the underlying flesh.
“You picked up a bag full of money in the toilet at the museum,” Matt said. “That’s extortion.”
“I went for a crap, and found it. That’s the truth.”
“You said before that you’d picked it up for some guy.”
“Er, yeah, I did.”
Where did you get this wolf-head ring?” Matt said, pulling a small translucent bag from his pocket to hold up for Brad/Terry to see the item of jewellery inside it.
“S’mine. I’ve had it for years,” he lied.
“That’s music to my ears, son, because the owner...you, are going away for life on the strength of that admission.”
“I dunno know what you mean.”
There was something wrong. Matt felt his spirits sink like a scuppered ship upending to vanish beneath the waves and begin a journey that would result in pressure crushing it as flat as an empty beer can under a car’s tyre. This hyped-up inadequate did not fit the profile of a cunning and organised killer. Terry McCall – if that was his real name – would spend every tormented conscious moment between drug-induced relief wondering where his next fix was coming from. He would be a petty thief. And no money or jewellery had been taken from Marsha Freeman’s purse. It didn’t fit.
Matt pulled head shots of Marsha, Kelly and Pamela from a buff A4 envelope and spread them on the scarred tabletop for Terry to look at.
“These women were tortured and strangled to death by whoever wore that ring, Terry. See the darker bruising in the shape of an animal’s head? I’d bet my pension on the ring you claim to have owned for years being a perfect match. That makes you a serial killer.”
“Like fuck! You’re tryin’ to stitch me up,” Terry said, shooting up off the chair and pulling his wrists apart in a futile effort to break free from the handcuffs.
“Sit down, Terry,” Matt ordered. “Look at those photographs, work out what depth of shit you’re in, then convince me that you’re just a numbnut dope head and not the sicko who works out his problems on prostitutes.”
“I swear to God I didn’t do any of this,” Terry said, pushing the 8x10s away from his side of the table with a shaking hand as he retook his seat. “A guy gave me a few quid up front and told me I’d get a grand in readies if I made a collection for him.”
“What guy? Describe him, and where you met him.” Matt said.
“Just some geezer. He was about my age and height. Wore one of those woolly caps like a tea cosy, and he had a thick, droopy moustache that didn’t look real. He gave me a mobile phone, and told me to wear that ring. Said he would be followin’ me, and would give me instructions over the phone. Told me to go in the toilet and wait. After a while, he gave me a bell and said that a guy would be comin’ into the stall next to me, and that I was to push the backpack under the partition and collect it when he had flushed and left.”
“And how did he contact you in the first place?”
“I was sleepin’ rough near Waterloo Bridge. He shook me awake in the middle of the night and...could I have a cigarette, please?”
Matt took the cigarette from his mouth and handed it across to the now sweating young man. Gave him a light and waited until he’d taken three long, deep drags off it.
“Carry on,” Matt said.
“He made the offer, then gave me the phone, backpack and the ring, and warned me not to sell the ring or phone, or the next time he woke me up, it would be to cut my throat. And I knew he meant it. His eyes didn’t lie. Oh, and he was wearin’ white rubber gloves.”
Matt and Pete spent another hour with Terry. They arranged for him to be held in custody for twenty-four hours, but didn’t bank on his being able to give them any more worthwhile information. He had been trying to make some easy money, end of story.
“The killer must have been outside the museum, boss,” Pete said. “The bastard will have watched it all go down and just walked away.”
“Yeah, Pete. He somehow sussed that we know about the ring, and he’ll be even more careful from hereon in. We just lost the edge we thought we had.”
“Do we have a Plan B, boss?”
“Of course. We go to the pub, have a pint and a sandwich and regroup. You’re paying.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He watched from a distance. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Villiers had apparently given them the slip, physically and electronically. The plods must think him a simpleton. He was well aware of the hi-tech equipment that could be employed to trace phone calls and track people and vehicles. He had watched countless movies that showed just what awesome, sneaky devices were used by law enforcement and government agencies. It was incredible to think that satellite cameras one hundred and fifty miles up could pinpoint an individual. No wonder that Bin Laden had reputedly never used a mobile phone or personal computer during the years he had remained at large. You cannot trap a wasp that knows to avoid the jam jar. Not that avoiding it had helped the Al-Qaeda leader escape retribution.
Lucas had not been foolish enough to
collect the cash himself. The dipshit he had got to play the stooge was a user; his only aspiration, to get enough money for the next chemical-induced high, that would alleviate his craving for a short period. Drugs were for no-brainers. It started as a recreational habit, especially among the rich and show biz types who snorted coke and popped downers and uppers at parties. Trouble was, the shit soon had you by the balls. It became a dependency; a need that would not be ignored or easily relinquished. He knew all about need, but his was not to stick a rolled bank note up his nostrils and do lines of mind-numbing nose candy. His was a far more rewarding form of enslavement. Not that he couldn’t stop. It was all a matter of choice. He chose to follow his heart. Why deny yourself?
He had gone into the museum wearing a false moustache, a loose, knitted cap and baggy clothing. He had hunched his shoulders and affected a shorter-stepped walk, and kept his eyes down. CCTV was like a virulent cancer ravaging society: Big Brother. Orwell was farsighted and near to the mark with his visionary imagination. He had been able to look at known values and recognise the path that paranoid governments would take. They would like every citizen to give a DNA sample, be fingerprinted, and carry ID, supposedly for the better protection of the many against the few. The new age of terror had given them licence to erode civil rights and introduce what they labelled Emergency Laws, to circumnavigate democracy. Britain was fast becoming like China or North Korea, insular and distrusting to the point of raging paranoia.
He watched Villiers, as the no-good politician nervously walked through the galleries looking at his wristwatch every twenty seconds. It was good to see a member of parliament outside the venerated halls of Westminster, in the real world and paying for being caught out. There was no way he could use spin to save his worthless skin.
As Villiers made his way towards the toilets after twenty-eight minutes had passed, Lucas actually walked passed him and almost brushed shoulders. He left the building and phoned McCall, who was in place, ready to push the backpack under the door of the stall next to his.
